Discussions

^W OF PRWCf^

'^fitOGICAL StW^!^

BX 8915 .D:5 1890 v . J5

Dabnev, Robert Lewis,

1820-

1898\

Discussions

DISCUSSIONS

UOKERT L DaBNEY, D.D., LL.D.,

PROFESSOR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNI\'ERSITY OF TEXAS,

AND FOR MANY YEARS PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY IN UNION

THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY IN VIRGINIA.

EDITED BY

C. R. VAUGHAN, D. D.,

Pastor of the PbesbTlTerian Church of New Providence, Va,

VOL III.
PHILOSOPHICAL.

RICHMOND VA.:

Pkesbyteeian CoMjnxTEE OF Publication.
1892.

COPTBIGHT BY

James K. Hazen, Secretary of Publication.
189 2.

Pbinted by

Whittet & Shepperson.

Richmond, Va.

CONTE?(TS.

Morality of the Legax Profession,

Positivism in Engl.\nd,

Liberty and Sla^'eey,

Popish Literature and Education,

Simplicity of Pulpit Style,

Geology and the Bible, .

A Caution Against Anti-Christian Science,

The Philosophy of Dr. Bledsoe,

The Philosophy of Volition,

The Emotions, ......

Ci\TL Ethics, ......

The Philosophy Regulating Private Corporations,
Inductive Logic Discussed,
Nature of Physical Causes,
Applications of Induction and Analogy.
Spurious Religious Excitements,
Final C.\use, ....

Anti-Biblical Theories of Rights,
Monism, .....

The Faculty Discourse, .
The Standard of Ordination,
The Immortality of the Soul, .

1
22
61

70
80
91
116
182
211
271
302
329
349
376
412
456
476
497
523
536
551
569

MORALITY OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION.

TIHE promiueut influence wliicli lawyers exert in tlie commii-
. nitj makes it a question of vital interest wliat are the ethi-
cal principles upon which the profession habitually regulate the
performance of their professional duties. Their social standing
is usually that of leaders in every society. As a class, they are
almost uniformly men of education, and their studies of the
science of the law, which is a great moral science, with their
converse with all conditions of men, and all sorts of secular
transactions, give them an intelligence and knowledge of the
jiuman heart which cannot but make them leaders of opinion.
It is from this class that the most of our legislators and rulers, and
all our judicial officers, must be taken. They are the agents by
whose hands are managed nearly all the complicated transac-
tions which involve secular rights, and interest the thoughts and
moral judgments of men most warmly. But more ; they are the
stated and official expounders of those rights, and not the mere
protectors of the possessions or material values about which our
rights are concerned. In every district, town or county of our
land, wo may say with virtual accuracy, monthly, or yet more
frequent, schools are held in which the ethical doctrines govern-
ing man's conduct to his fellow man are publicly and orally
taught to the whole body of the citizens, with accessory circum-
stances, giving the liveliest possible interest, vividness and pun-
gency to the exposition. Of these schools the lawyers are the
teachers. Their lessons are presented, not in the abstract, like
so many heard from the pulpit, but in the concrete, exemplified
in cases which arouse the whole community to a living interest.
Their lessons are endlessly varied, touching every human right
and duty summed up in the second table of the law. They are
usually intensely practical, and thus admit of an immediate and
easy application. They are always deHvered with animation,
and often with an impressive eloquence. It is, therefore, obvious

Vgl. III.— 1. 1

"A MORALITY OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION.

that this profession must have fearful influence in forming the
moral opinions of the community. The concern which the coun-
try has in their professional integrity, and in their righteous and
truthful exercise of these vast powers, is analogous to that which
the church has in the oiihodoxy of her ministers. Kor are these
influences of the legal profession limited to things secular ; for
the domains of morals and religion so intermingle that the moral
condition of a people, as to the duties of righteousness between
man and man, greatly influences their state towards God. It
may well be doubted whether an acute and unprincipled bar
does not do more to corrupt and ruin many communities than
the pulpit does to sanctify and save them. These things at
once justify the introduction of the topic into these discussions,
and challenge the attention of Christian lawyers and readers to
its great importance.

In describing what is believed to be the prevalent, though not
universal, theory and usage of the bar, we would by no means
compose our description out of those base arts which are de-
spised and repudiated as much by honorable lawyers as by all
other honest men. There is no need to debate the morahty or
immorality of the various tricks ; the subornation of witnesses ;
the bribing of jurymen ; the falsification of evidence in its recital ;
the misquotation or garbling of authorities ; the bullying of truth-
ful and modest persons placed in the witness' stand by no choice
of their own ; the shaving of the claims of clients in advance of
a verdict by their own counsel, by which some lawyers disgrace
their fraternity. This class are beyond the reach of moral con-
siderations ; and, concerning their vile iniquity, all honest men
are already agreed. Nor, on the other hand, can we take the
principles of that honorable but small minority as a fair exam-
pier of the theory of the profession, who defend in the bar no
act or doctrine which their consciences would not justify in the
sight of God, and who say and do nothing officially which they
would not maintain as private gentlemen. This class, we fear,
are regarded by their own fi'aternity rather as the puritans of
the profession. It is believed that the theory of the great mass
of reputable lawyers is about this: "that the advocate, in rep-
resenting his client's interest, acts officially, and not personally,
and, therefore, has no business to entertain, even as an advocate,.

MORALITY OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION. 3

anj opinion of the true merits of the case, for this is the func-
tion of the judge and jury ; that the advocate's office, to perform
which faithfully he is even sworn, is to present his client's cause
in the most favorable light which his skill and knowledge of law
will enable him to throw around it ; and that if this should be
more favorable than truth and justice approve, this is no concern
of his, but of the advocate of the opposite party, who has equal
obligation and opportunity to correct the picture ; that not the
advocate himself, but the judge and jury who sit as umpires, are
responsible for the righteousness of the final verdict ; that, ac-
cording to the conception of the EngHsh law, a court is but a
debating society, in which the advocates of plaintiflfs and defen-
dants are but the counterpoises, whose only function is the al-
most mechanical, or, at least, the merely intellectual one of
pressing down each one his own scale, while an impartial judge
holds the balance ; that this artificial scheme is found by a sound
experience to be — not, indeed, perfect — but, on the whole, the
most accurate way to secure just verdicts in the main, and that
this fact is the sufficient moral defence of the system."

Now, it is not our intention, in impugning the morality of
this theory, to charge the profession with immorality and dis-
honor, as compared with other professions. ^Vhile the bar ex-
hibits, like all other classes, evidences of man's sinful nature,
it deserves, and should receive, the credit of ranking among the
foremost of secular classes in honorable and generous traits.
Lawyers may urge with much justice^ that other professions
habitually practice means of emolument strictly analogous to
their official advocacy of a bad cause. The merchant, for in-
stance, says all that he can say, truthfully, in commendation of
his wares, and is silent concerning i]ie jper-contras of their defects.
" To find out these," he says, "is the buyer's business." The
farmer praises all the good points of the horse or the bullock he
sells, and leaves the piu'chaser to detect the defects, if he can.
It is not intended, then, to assert, that the practice of this the-
ory of the advocate's duty is more immoral than other things
commonly supposed reputable in other callings. The question
to be gravely considered is : whether the greater importance of
the advocate^s profession, as affecting not only pecuniary and
personal rights, but the moral sentiments and virtues of the

4: MORALITY OF THE LEGAL PKOFESSIOX.

common wealth, does not give a graver aspect to the errors of
their theory of action. It is not that the bar is more immoral
than commerce or agriculture ; but that, if the bar acts on an
immoral theory, it is so much more mischievous. Xor, again,
is it asserted that the individual advocate is necessarily a vicious
man, because the professional idea into which he is betrayed is
a vicious one. It is Lot doubted that many men of social honor
act out the idea of theu' office above described, who, if they
were convinced of its error, would repudiate it conscientiously.
It is not questioned that the professional intercourse of lawyers
with each other is usually courteous, generous and fraternal,
above most of the secular professions ; that many magnanimous
cases exist where peaceful counsels are given by them to augrj
litigants, so as to prevent controversies which would be ex-
tremely profitable to the advocates, if prosecuted ; that there is
no class of worldly men who usually respond more nobly to the
claims of beneficence than lawyers ; and that they deserve usually
their social position in the front rank of the respectable classes.
But, to recur to the truth already suggested, it should be remem-
bered that their profession is not merely commercial or pecuni-
ary in its concernments ; it is intellectual and moral ; it affects
not only the interests but the virtues oi the people : lawj'ers are
their leaders and moral teachers. Therefore, they act under
higher responsibilities than the mere man of dollars, and should
be satisfied only by a higher and better standard. The merchant
may, perhaps, law^fully determine his place of residence by re-
gard to his profits : the preacher of the gospel may not ; and
should he do so, he would be held as recreant to his obligations.
^TLj this difference ? In like manner we may argue that should
the lawyer act on a moral standard no higher than that of the
mere reputable man of traffic, he would violate the obligations
of his more responsible profession. But if this were not so, the
obvious remark remains, that, if aU other secular professions act
unscrupulously, this is no standard, and no justification for the
bar: to "measiu'e oui'selves by ourselves, and compare our-
selves among ourselves is not wise." The only question with
the answer to which time integrity will satisfy itself, is this:
ichether the ahi/i^e theory of an advocates functions is rnm^ally
right.

MORALITY OP THE LEGAL PROFESSION. 5

We shall begin a diffident and respectful attempt to prove
that it is not, by questioning the accuracy of the plea of bene-
ficial policy, in which it is asserted, that the administration of
justice is, on the whole, better secured hj this artificial structure
of courts, than by any other means. We point to the present
state of the administration of justice in our country;' to the
*' glorious uncertainties of the law ; " to the endless diversities
and contradictions, not only of hired advocates of parties, but
of dignified judges ; to the impotence of penal law, and espe-
cially to the shameful and fearful license allowed among us to
crimes of bloodshed ; and ask, can this be a wholesome, a po-
litic system, which bears such fruits? Is this the best judicial
administration for which civilized, Christian, free nations may
hope ? Then, alas, for our future prospects ! But it is notorious
among enlightened men, that there are States, as for instance
Denmark, Wurtemburg, Belgium, and even France, where the
general purposes of order, security and equal rights — not, in-
deed, as towards the sovereign, but between citizen and citizen — -
are far better obtained in practice than they are among us, and
that, in some cases, without our boasted trial by jury. Our sys-
tem, judged by its fruits, is not even politic : it is a practical
nuisance to the State. It may be well doubted whether, in spite
of all our boasted equal rights, the practical protection this day
given to life, limb and estate, by the unmitigated military des-
potism of the G Dvernor-General of Cuba, not to say by the ty-
rannical government of Louis Napoleon, is not, on the whole,
more secure and prompt and equitable, than that now enjoyed
in many of the United States. And the worst feature is, that as
the legal profession has increased with the growth of the coun-
try, and gotten more and more control over legal transactions,
these defects of judicial administration have increased. It is
urged in favor of this system of professional advocacy, that great
practical injustice would frequently result from the inequality of
knowledge, tact, fluency and talent in parties, if they did not
enjoy the opportunity of employing counsel trained to the law
and exercising their office in the spirit we have described. lb
would often happen, it is said, that a rich, educated, skilful man,
might contend with a poor, ignorant and foolish one ; but, by
resorting to counsel, all these differences are equalized. It may

6 MORALITY OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION.

be justly asked, whether there are not inequalities in the skill
and diligence of advocates, and whether the wealth which would
give to the rich suitor so unjust an advantage over his poor
adversary, if they pleaded their causes in person, does not, in
fact, give an equally unjust advantage, in the numbers and. abil-
ity of the counsel it enables him to secure, when those coun-
sel are permitted to urge his cause beyond their own private
convictions of its merits. We do not, of course, dream of any
state of things in which professional advocates can be dispensed
with Avholly ; minors, females, persons of feeble intellects, must
have them in some form. But it is verj- doubtful whether as
equitable resiilts would not be reached in the main, were all other
suitors, except the classes we have mentioned, obliged to appear
per se, extreme as such a usage would be, as those reached
under our present system. Cases are continually occiniing, in
which verdicts are obtained contrary to right, in virtue of ine-
qualities in the members, reputation, talents, or zeal of opposing
counsel, or of the untoward prejudices under which one party
has to struggle. Especially is this assertion true of a multitude
of cases in which the commonwealth is a party ; for when this
unscrupulous theory of an advocate's functions is adopted, it is
universally found that the personal client on the one side is
served with a different kind of zeal and perseverance from that
exerted on the other side in behalf of that distant, imaginary,
and vague personality, the State. This theory, therefore, proba-
bly does as much to create unfair inequalities as to correct
them. And it usually happens that the advocate derives his
warmth, his strongest arguments, and most telling points, from
his conversations with the eager client, whom self-interest has
impelled to view the controversy with all the force of a thor-
oughly aroused mind ; that, in a word, the client does more to
make the speech effective than his counsel.

But we are disposed to attach comparatively little importance
to these considerations. Policy is not the test of right, on which
side soever the advantage may lie ; and we have too much faith
in the immutable laws of rectitude, and in the providence of a
holv God over human affairs, to believe that a true expediency
is ever to be found in that which is immoral. In the final issue,
that which is right wih always be found most expedient. If,

MORALITY OF THE LEGAL TROFESSIOX. 7

"therefore, the theory we oppose can be shown to be immoral,
there will be no need to reply to the assertion of its expediency.
We remark, then, in the second place, that it is a presumptive
reason against this theory of the lawyer's functions, that so con-
stant a tendency is exhibited by individuals of the profession
to descend to a still lower grade of expedients and usages in the
pursuit of success. While the honorable men of the profession
stop at the species of advocacy we have defined, there is another
part, a minority we would fain hope, who show a constant pres-
sure towards practices less defensible. To that pressure some
are ever yielding, by gradations almost insensible, until the worst
men of the body reach those vile and shameless arts which are
the ojyjyrobrium of the bar. It is greatly to be feared that this
tendency downwards is manifesting itself more and more forci-
bly in our country as the numbers of the profession increase,
and competition for subsistence becomes keener. Now, our
argument is not so much in the fact that the profession is found
to have dishonest members ; for then the existence of quacks
and patent medicines might prove the art of the physicians to
be immoral ; but in the fact that the honorable part of the bar are
utterly unable to draw any distinct and decisive line, compatibly
Avith their principles, to separate themselves from the dishonor-
able. The fact to which we point is, then, that men who prac-
tice in their clients' behalf almost every conceivable grade of
art and argument unsustained by their own secret conscience,
short of actual lying and bribery, consider themselves as acting
legitimately under the theory of the profession ; and their more
scrupulous brethren, who hold the same theory, cannot consis-
tently deny their claim. If the advocate may go farther in the
support of his client's case than his own honest judgment of its
merits would bear him out ; we ask, at what grade of sophistry
must he stop ? Where shall the line be drawn ? If he may
with propriety blink one principle of equity or law, in his behalf,
may he not for a similar reason blink two ? If he may adroitly
and tacitly, but most effectively, insinuate a sophistry in his
favor, might he not just as well speak it boldly out? The suj)-
pressio veri not seldom amounts to a suggedlo falsi. And if the
duty to the client, with the constitution of the court, justify the
insinuation or assertion of a sophistry, by what reason can it be

8 MORALITY OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION.

sliown that they will not justify the insinuation of a falsehood?
A sophistry is a logical falsehood ; and if he who offers it com-
prehends its unsoundness, we cannot see how he is less truly
guilty of falsehood than he who tells a lie. To speak falsehood
is knowingly to frame and utter a proposition which is not true.
He who knowingly urges a sophistical argument does in sub-
stance the same thing; he propagates, if he does not utter, a
false proposition, namely, the conclusion of his false argument.
But we may fairly press this reasoning yet further. No one will
deny that when the advocate, as an advocate, suppresses truth, or
insinuates a claim more than just to his cHent, or less than just
to his adversary, any such act would be insincere, and therefore
immoral, if it were done as an individual and private act. The
circumstances which are supposed to justify it are, that he is not
acting for himself, but for another, not individually, but officially ;
that there is an antagonist whose professional business it is to
see that he gets no undue advantage for his client, and that the
lawyer is not bound to form any private opinion whatever about
the question, whether the advantages he is procuring for his
client are righteous or not, that being the business of the judge
and jury. These circumstances, it is claimed, make that profes-
sionally innocent which would otherwise be a positive sin.
Wliy, then, may they not justify the commission of any other
sin which would be profitable to the client ; and what limit would
there be to the iniquities which professional fidelity might de-
mand, provided only the client's case were bad enough to need
them ? If it is right, for his sake, " to make the worst appear the
better cause," why not also falsify testimony, or garble authori-
ties, or bribe jurors, or suborn perjurers, if necessary to victory?
It would be hard to affix a consistent limit, for the greater ur-
gency of the client's case would justify the greater sin. It is no
answer to this to say that the latter expedients would be wrong,
because the opposite party is entitled to expect that the contro-
versy will be conducted with professional fairness, and that no
advantage will be sought, which professional skill and knowledge
may not be supposed able to detect and rebut if the party seek-
ing it is not fairly entitled to it. For, according to the theory
under discussion, this professional fairness is itself a conven-
tional thing, and not the same with absolute righteousness ; and

MORALITY OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION 9

any conduct which was conventionally recognized for the time
being would come up to the definition. So that the party se-
cretly contemplating the employment of some of these vile ex-
pedients, would only have to notify his antagonist in general
terms, to be on the lookout for any imaginable trick, in order to
render his particular trick professionally justifiable. And it is
wholly delusive to urge that the advantage sought by one i^aiiy
is legitimate, because it is only such a one as the opposing party
may be expected to detect and counteract by his skill, if com-
petent for his professional duties as he professes ; for the reason
why the given artifice called legitimate is used in any case is
just this, that it is supposed the opposing paiiy viill not have
skill enough to detect and counteract it. Its concealment from
him is the sole ground for the hope of success in using it ; and
it is a mere evasion to say that it is such a legal artifice as the
opponent's legal skill may reasoaably be supposed competent
to meet ; when, in that particular case, it is used for the very rea-
son that it is believed his skill will not be competent to meet it.
It is used because it is hoped that it will remain as much un-
detected and unanswered as would the illegitimate tricks of
falsification and bribery. We believe, therefore, that if the ad-
vocate may transgress the line of absolute truth and righteous-
ness at all in his client's behalf, there is no consistent stopping
place. No limit can be consistently drawn, and the constant
tendencies of a part of the profession "uith the various grades of
license which different advocates, called reputable, allow them-
selves, indicate the justice of this objection.

We may properly add just here that, even if the theory we
oppose were in itself moral, it might yet be a grave question
whether it is moral to subject one's self to a temptation so
subtle and urgent as that which allures the advocate to trans-
gress the legitimate Hmit. The limit is confessedly a conven-
tional one at any rate, and not absolutely coincident with what
would be strict righteousness, if the person were acting indi-
vidually and privately; it is separated from immoral artifices
by no broad, permanent, consistent line; the gradation which
leads down from the practices called reputable, to those
alltnvedly base, is one composed of steps so slight as to be
almost invisible ; and the desire to conquer, so vehemently

10 MORALITY OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION.

stimulated by the forensic competition, will almost surely seduce
exen the scrupulous conscience to transgress. Xo sinner has
a right to subject his infirm and imperfect virtue to so deadly a
trial.

In the third place, we respectfully object to the lawfulness of
the attitudes in which this theory of the profession places the
advocate. It claims that the court is but the debating society,
in which the function of the two parties of lawyers is, not to
decide the justice of the cause, that being the function of judge
and jury, but to urge, each side, all that can be professionally
urged in favor of its own client; and that out of this exj>urte
struggle, impartialh" presided over by the listening umpire,
there will usually proceed the most intelligent and equitable
decision. But the fatal objection is: that even if the latter
claim were true, we might "not do evil that good might come."
And truth and right are sacred things, which cany an imme-
diate, universal, inexorable obligation to every soul in every
circumstance, if he deals with them at all, to deal with them
according to their reality. Man is morally responsible for every
act he performs which has moral character or consequences ;
and no circumstance or subterfuge authorizes him to evade
this bond. His maker vnll allow him to interpose no conven-
tionality, no artificial plea of ofticial position between him and
his duty. Every act which has moral character man performs
personally, and under an immediate personal responsibility.
The mere statement of this moral truth is sufficient to evince
its justness ; the conscience sees it by its own light ; and it is
obvious that unless God maintained his moral government over
individuals in this immediate, personal way, he could not main-
tain it practically at all. Some form of organization might be
devised to place men in a conventional, official position, in
which evervthing mi^fht be done which a sinful desire mic;ht
crave, and thus every law of God might be evaded. In a word,
whatever else a man ma}" delegate by an artificial convention of
law, he cannot delegate his responsibility ; that is as inalienable
as his identity. And it is equally impossible for man volun-
tarily and intelligently to assume the doing of a vicarious act,
and leave the whole guilt of that act cleaving to his principal.
His deed, in consenting to act vicariously, is his personal, iudi-

MORALITY OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION. 11

vidual deed, lying immediately between liim and liis God ; and
if the deed lias moral quality at all, it is liis own personal mo-
rality or immorality.

Now, truth and right are concerned in every legal controversy.
But these are things to which moral character essentially be-
longs. If a man speaks, he ought to speak truth ; if he handles
a right, he ought to handle it righteously. Lawyers seem to
feel as though this conventional theory of the courts of law had
no more moral quality attaching to it than the apparatus by
which the centre of gravity of a ship is restored to the middle,
as she leans to one side or the other. The honest sailor seizes
the lever by which he moves his ponderous chest of cannon balls
or chain cable, and when the sliding of some heavy part of the
cargo in the hold, or the impulse of wind or wave causes the
ship to lurch to the larboard, he shoves his counterpoise to the
starboard side. He teUs you that his object is, not to throw the
ship on her beam ends, but to maintain a fair equilibrium, by
going as much too far on the one side as the disturbing force
had gone on the other. And this is all right enough. The forces
which he moves or counterbalances are dead, senseless, souUess,
without responsibility. But it is altogether otherwise when we
come to handle truth and right. For they are sacred things.
They can in no sense be touched without immediate moral obli-
gation ; and to pervert a truth or right on the one hand, in or-
der that a similar perversion on the other hand may be counter-
balanced, is sin, always and necessarily sin ; it is the sin of
meeting one wicked act by another wicked act, or, at best, of
"doing evil that good may come." An attemj^t may be made at
this point to evade this clear principle of morals by means of
the confusion of thought produced by an appeal to a false anal-
ogy. Perhaps some such illustration as this may be presented :
the soldier obeys his officer ; he honestly, fairly and mercifully
performs the tasks assigned him in his lawful profession, and
yet sometimes takes life in battle. Now, supj)ose the war to
which his commander leads him is an unrighteous war? AU
must admit that every death perpetrated by the unrighteous ag-
gressor, in that war, is a murder in God's sight. But we justly
conclude that this dreadful guilt all belongs to the wicked sov-
ereign and legislature who declare the war, and not to the pas-

12 MOKALITY OP THE LEGAL rROFESSION.

sive soldier -svlio merely does his duty in obeying his commander.
Hence, it is asserted, " the principle appears false ; and there
may be cases in which it is lawful for a man to do vicariously,
or officially, what it would be wrong to do individually."

We reply that the general i:)roposition thus deduced is one
essentially different from the one which our principle denies.
To say that a man may lawfully do some things vicariously or
officially, which he may not do privately and individually, is a
totally different thing from saying that if an act would be imme-
diately and necessarily wrong in itself, whenever and however
done, the agent who does that act for another may still be inno-
cent in doing it, because he acts for another. But the latter is
the proposition which must bo proved, in order to rebut our
principles. "We remark further upon the illustration above
stated, that there are several fundamental differences between
the case of the soldier and that of the advocate who profession-
ally defends his client's wrong-doing. One is, that the soldier,
in the case supposed, has not volunteered of his own free choice
to fight in this particular war Avhicli is unrighteous. If he has,
then we can by no means exculpate him from a share in the
guilt of all the murders which the wicked sovereign perpetrates
in battle l)y his hand. It is only when the soldier is draughted
into this service without his option, and compelled by the laws
of his country, that we can exculpate him. But the advocate
has chosen his own profession freely in the first instance, and
he chooses each particular case which he advocates, with what-
ever justice it may involve. For, whatever fidelity he may sup-
pose his professional oath, perhaps thoughtlessly taken, com-
pels him to exercise in behalf of his unrighteous client, after he
has made him his client, certainly he is not compelled to under-
take his case at all unless he chooses.

Another minor difference of the two cases is, that the soldier,
not being a civilian by profession and habit, is competent ta
have very few thoughts or judgments about the abstract righteous-
ness of the war to which his sovereign has sent him ; whereas,
it is the very trade and profession of the lawyer to investigate
the righteousness or wrongfulness of transactions ; so that if,
indeed, he is aiding his client to perpetrate an iujiistice, he is
the very man of all others who should be most distinctly aware

MORALITY OF THE LEGAL PKOFESSION. 13

of the "WTOiig about to be done. But the chief and all-auUicieut
diii'ereuce of the two cases is, that all killing is not murder ; but
all utterance of that which is known to bo not true is lying.
The work of slaying may or may not be rightful ; the case where
the lawful soldier, obeying his commander in slaying in battle,
commits murder, is the exceptional case, not indeed in fre-
quency of occurrence perhaps, but in reference to the professed
theory of legitimate government. But to the rule of truth and
right there is no exception ; all known assertion of untruth is
sin. How comes it that the profession of slaying as an agent
for the temporal sovereign, as a soldier or sheriff, for instance, is
in any case a righteous one ? Only because there are cases in
"which the sovereign may himself righteously slay. And in those
cases, it may be that this right to slay, which the sovereign him-
self possesses, may be held properly by another person by dele-
gation. But no man can delegate what he does not possess.
The client cannot therefore delegate, in any case, to his lawyer,
the function of making his wrong-doing appear right, because it
would be in everj' case wrong for him to do it himself. And
here we are brought to a point where we may see the utter al)-
siu'dity of all the class of illustrations we are combating. For
law3'ers will themselves admit that if they acted individually and
privately when they present pleas which they are avv^are are "an-
just, it would he sin. Their defence is that the}^ do it oflicLall3^
Well, then, if the client did it for himself, it would be sin ; how
can the lawyer, his agent, derive from him the right to do what
he has himself no right to do ? Or, will it be said that the of-
ficial right of the advocate to act f(jr a given client is not dele-
gated to him from that client, but from the State which licensed
him as an advocate ? We think this is a doctrine which clients
would be rather slow to admit. And again, the State is as ut-
terly devoid as the client of all right to misrepresent truth and
right. God has given to the civil magistrate the right to slay
murderers and invaders, but he has given to no person nor com-
monwealth under heaven the right to depart from the inexorable
lines of truth and right.

This great truth brings us back to the doctrine of each man's
direct and unavoida1)le responsibihty to God, for all his acts pos-
sessing moral character or moral consequences. Now, in jier-

14 MORALITY OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION.

forming our cliity, God requires us always to employ the best
lights of reason and conscience he has given us, to find out for
ourselves what is right. It is man's bounden duty to have an
opinion of his own concerning the lawfulness of every act he
performs, w^hich possesses any moral quality, God does not
permit us to employ any man or body of men on earth as our
conscience-keejDers. How futile, then, is the evasion presented
at this point by the advocates of the erroneous theory, " that the
lawyer is not to be supposed to know the unrighteousness of his
client's cause ; that it is not his business to have any opinion
about it, but, on the contrary, the peculiar biisiness of the jvidge
and jury ; nav , that he is not entitled to have any opinion about
it, and would be wrong if he had, for the law presumes every
man innocent till after he is proved wicked ; and when the ad-
vocate performs his functions, no verdict has jet been pro-
nounced by the only party authorized to pronounce one." The
fatal weakness of this feeblo sophistry is in this, that these as-
sertions concerning the exclusive right of the judge and jury to
decide the merits of the case are only true as to one particular
relation of the client. The judge and jury are the only party-
authorized to pronounce the cUent wrong or guilty, as concerns
the privations of his life, liberty or property. It would, indeed,
be most illegal and unjust for lawyer or private citizen to con-
clude his guilt in advance of judicial investigation, in the sense
of proceeding thereupon to inflict that punishment which the
magistrate alone is avithorized to inflict. But this is all. If any
private, personal right or duty of the private citizen, or of any
one, is found to be dependent on the innocence or wickedness
of that party before the court, it is a right and duty to proceed
to form an opinion of his character, as correct as may be, by the
light of our own consciences, in advance of judicial opinion, or
even in opposition to it. Yea, we cannot help doing so, if we
try.

Now, the question which tho advocate has to ask himself as to
an unrighteous client is : " shall I professionally defend his un-
righteousness, or shall I not ?" And that question involves an
unavoidable duty, and constitutes a matter personal, private and
immediate, between him and his God. In deciding that he will
not lend his professional assistance to that man's unrighteous-

MORALITY OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION. 15

ness, lie decides a personal duty ; lie does not toucli the bad
man's franchises, nor anticipate his judicial sentence. Let us
illustrate. Many years ago, an advocate, distinguished for his
eloquence and high social character, successfully defended a vile
assassin, and, by his tact, boldness and pathos, secured a verdict
of acquittal. When the accused v/ as released, he descended into
the crowd of the court house, to receive the congratulations of
his degraded companions, and, almost wild with elation, advanced
to his advocate, offering his hand, with profuse expressions of ad-
miration and gratitude. The dignified lawyer sternly joined his.
own hands behind his back and turned away, saying : " I touch
no man's hand that is foul with murder.'' But in what light did
this advocate learn that this criminal was too base to be recos-
nized as a fellow man ? The court had pronounced him inno-
cent! It was only by the light of his private judgment — a pri-
vate judgment formed not only in advance of, but in the teeth of,
the authorized verdict. Where, now, were all the quibbles by
which this honorable gentleman had persuaded himself to lend
his professional skill to protect from a righteous doom a wretch
too vile to toucli his hand? as that "the lawyer is not the judge;
that he is not authorized to decide the merits of the case?"
Doubtless, this lawyer's understanding spoke now, clear enough,
in some such terms as these : " my hand is my own ; it is purely
a personal question to myself whether I shall give it to this mur-
derer ; and, in deciding that personal question, I have a right to
be guided by my own personal opinion of him. In claiming this,
I infringe no legal right to life, liberty or possessions, which the
constituted authorities have restored to him." But was not his
tongue his ovm, in the same sense with his hand? Was not the
question, whether he could answer it to his God for having used
his tongue to prevent the punishment of crime, as much a pri-
vate, personal, individual matter, to be decided by his own pri-
vate judgment, as the question whether he should shake hands
with a felon ? Let us suppose another case : a prominent advo-
cate defends a man of doubtful character from the charge of
fraud, and rescues him, by his skill, from his well-deserved pun-
ishment. But now this scurvy fellow comes forward and claims
familiar access to the society of the honorable lawyer's house,
and aspires to the hand of his daughter in marriage. He imme-

16 MOEALITT OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION.

diately receives a significant hint that lie is not considered -^ortlij
of either honor. But he replies: "Ton, Mr. Counsellor, told
your conscience that it was altogether legitimate to defend my
questionable transactions professional!}-, because the law did not
constitute you the judge of the merits of the case, because the
law says every man is to be presumed to be innocent till con-
victed of guilt by the constituted tribunal, and because you were
not to be supposed to have any opinion about my guilt or inno-
cence. Xow the constituted authorities have honorably acquitted
me — at your advice ! I claim, therefore, that you shall act out your
own theory, and practically treat me as an honorable man." We
opine the honorable counsellor wotdd soon see through his own
sophistry, and reply that those principles only applied to his
civic treatment of him as a citizen ; that his house and his daugh-
ter were his own ; and that he was entitled, yea, solemnly bound,
in disposing of them, to exercise the best lights of his private
judgment. So say we, and nothing can be so intimately per-
sonal and private, so exclusively between a man and his God, as
his concern in the morality of his own acts. Since God holds
every man immediately responsible for the way in which he deals
with truth and right, whenever and in whatever capacity he deals
with them, there can be no concern in which he is so much en-
titled and bound to decide for himself in the light of his o"\^^l
honest conscience. The advocate is bound, therefore, to form
his ovm independent opinion, in God's fear, whether in assisting
each applicant he will be assisting wrong, or asserting falsehood.
This preliminary question he ought to consider, not profession-
ally, but personally and ethically. Let every man rest assured
that God's claims over his moral creatures are absolutely inevi-
table. He will not be cheated of satisfaction to his oiitraged law
by the plea that the wrong was done professionally ; and when
the lawyer is suffering the righteous doom of his professional
misdeeds, how will it fare with the inan f

Our fourth consideration is but an extension and application
of the great principle of personal responsibility which we have
attempted to illustrate above. We would grouj) together the
practical wrongs which evolve in the operation of this artificial
and immoral theory ; we would invite our readers to look at
their enormity, and to ask themselves whether it can be that

MORALITY OF THE LEGAL PEOFESSION. XI

these tilings are innocently done. Let tlie conscience speak;
for its "Rami and immediate intuitions have a logic of their own,
less likely to be misled bj glaring sophistry than the specula-
tions of the head. And here we would paint not so much the
judicial wrongs directly inflicted by suitors unrighteously suc-
cessful ; for here the lawyer might seem not so directly responsi-
ble. AA"e might, indeed, point to the case in which plausible
fraud succeeds in stripping the deserving, the widow, the or-
phan, of their substance, inflicting thus the ills of penury ; or to
that in which slander or violence is enabled to stab the peace of
innocent hearts, undeterred by fear of righteous retribution;
and ask the honest, unsophisticated mind, can he be innocent
who, though not advising, nor perpetrating such WTongs in his
individual capacity, has yet prostituted skill, experience, and
perhaps eloquence, to aid the perpetrator? Can it be right?
But we would speak rather of those evils which proceed directly
from the advocate himself in his own professional doings. Here
is a client who has insidiously won subtle advantages over his
neighbor in business, until he has gorged himself with ill-gotten
gain. He applies to the reputable lawyer to protect him against
the righteous demand of restitution. The lawyer undei-takes
his case, and thenceforth he thinks it his dutj', not indeed to
falsify evidence, or misquote law, or positively to assert the
innocence of injustice, but to put the best face on questionable
transactions which they will wear — to become the apologist of
that which every honorable man repudiates. Kow, we speak
not of the wrongs of the despoiled neighbor ; of these it may be
said the client is the immediate agent. But there stands a
crowd of eager, avaricious, grasping listeners, each one hungry
for gain, and each one learning from this professional expounder
of law how to look a little more leniently on indirection and
fraud; how to listen a little more complacently to the tempta-
tions before which his own feeble rectitude was tottering already ;
how to practice on his own conscience the deceit which " divides
a hair between north and northwest side;" until the business
morality of the country is widely corrupted. Can this be right?
Can he be innocent who produces such results, for the selfish
motive of a fee? But worse still; a multitude of crimes of vio-
lence are committed, and when their bloody perpetrators are

Vol. III.— 2.

18 MORALITY OF THE LEGAL PEOFESSION.

brought before their country's bar, professional counsel flj to
the rescue, and try their most potent arts. See them rise up
before ignorant and bewildered juries, making appeals to weak
compassion, till the high sentiment of retributive justice is
almost ignored by one-half of the community. Hear them
advocate before eager crowds of heady young men, already far
too prone to rash revenge, the attractive but devilish theory of
"the code of honor;" or assert, in the teeth of God's law and
man's, that the bitterness of the provocation may almost justif}'
deliberate assassination; or paint, in graphic touches, which
make the cheek of the young man tingle with the hot blood, the
foul scorn and despite of an unavenged insult, until the mind of
the youth in this laud has forgotten that voice pronounced by
law both human and divine, "vengeance is mine, I will repay,"
and is infected with a dreadful code of retaliation and murder ;
until the course of justice has come to be regarded as so impo-
tently uncertain, that the instincts of natural indignation against
crime disdain to wait longer on its interposition, and introduce
the terrific regime of private vengeance, or mob-law ; and until
the land is polluted with blood which cries to heaven from the
earth. Can it be right that any set of men, in any function or
attitude, should knowingly contribute to produce such a fatal
disorganization of public sentiment ; and that, too, for the sake
of a fee, or of rescuing a guilty wretch from a righteous doom
which he had plucked down on his own head ? Can it be right?
And now, will any man argue that God hath no principle of re-
sx?onsibility by which he can bring all the agents of such mis-
chiefs as these into judgment? That such things as these can
be wrought in the land, and yet the class of men who have in
part produced them can, by a set of professional conventionali-
ties, juggle themselves out of their responsibility for the dire
result? Nay, verily, there is jei a God that judgeth in the
earth. But if such a theory as the one we have discussed were
right, while bearing such fruits, his government would be practi-
cally abdicated.

The fifth and last consideration is drawn fi-om man's duty to
himself. The highest duty which man owes to himself is to
preserve and improve his own virtue. Our race is fallen, and
the reason and conscience which are appointed for our inward.

MORALITY OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION. 19

guides are weakened and dimmed. But yet God places in our
power a process of moral education by wliicli tliey may be im-
proA'ed. The habit of acting rightly confirms their uncertain de-
cisions, and a thorough rectitude of intention and candor act
as the " euphrasy and rue " which clarify our mental vision.
How clear, then, the obhgation to employ those high faculties
in such a way that they shall not be perverted and sophisti-
cated ? There is no lesson of experience clearer than this, that
the habit of advocating what is not thoroughly believed to be
right, perverts the judgment and obfuscates the conscience, until
they become unreliable. No prudent instructor would approve
of the advocacy of what was supposed to be error by the pupils
in a debating society. Such au association was formed bv a
circle of pious young men in tho countrj- ; and once upon a
time it was determined to debate the morality of the manufac-
ture of ardent spirits. But it was found that all were of one
mind in condemning it. So, to create some show of interest,
one respectable young man consented to assume the defence of
the calling, "for argument's sake." The result was, that he unset-
tled his own convictions, and ultimately spent his life as a
distiller, in spite of the grief and urgent expostulations of his
fi'iends, the censures of his church, and the uneasiness of a rest-
less conscience. Nothing is better known by sensible men than
the fact that experienced lawyers, while they may be acute and
plausible arguers, are unsafe judges concerning the practical
affairs of life. They are listened to with interest, but without
confidence. Their ingenious orations pass for almost nothing,
while the stammering and brief remarks of some unsophisticated
farmer carry all the votes. The very plea by which advocates
usually justify their zeal in behalf of clients seemingly unworthy
of it, confesses the justice of these remarks. They say that they
are not insincere in their advocacy, that they speak as they be-
lieve ; because it almost alwaj'S occurs that after becoming in-
terested in a case, they become thoroughly convinced of the
righteousness of their own client's cause. Indeed, not a few
have said that no man is a good advocate who does not acquire
the power of tlius convincing himself. But there are two par-
ties to each case. Are the counsel on both sides thus convinced
of the justice of their own causes, when of course, at least, one

20 MORALITY OF THE LEGAL PEOFESSIOX.

must be wrong ? Fatal power : to bring the imperial principles
of reason and conscience so under the dominion of self-interest
and a fictitious zeal, that in one-half the instances they go
astray, and are unconscious of their error ! It has been re-
marked of some men famous as politicians, who had spent
their earlier years as advocates, that they were as capable
of speaking well on the wrong side as on the right of i3ub-
lic questions, and as likely to be found on the wrong side as ou
the right.

Now, it is a fearful thing to tamper thus with the faculties
which are to regulate our moral existence, and decide our im-
mortal state. It may not be done with impunity. Truth has
her sanctities ; and if she sees them dishonored, she will hide
her vital beams from the eyes which dehghted to see error
dressed in her holy attributes, until the reproliate mind is given
over to delusions, to believe lies. Were there no force in any
thing which has preceded, duty to one's self would constitute a
sufficient reason against the common theory of the advocate's
office.

We conclude, therefore, that the only moral theory of the le-
gal profession is that which makes conscience preside over every
official word and act in precisely the same mode as over the pri-
vate, individual life. It does not appear how the virtuous man
can consistently go one inch farther, in the advocacy of a client's
cause, than his own honest private judgment decides the judge
and jury ought to go ; or justify in the bar anything which he
would not candidly jiistify in his ovm. private circle ; or seek for
any client anything more than he in his soul believes righteous-
ness demands. ""Whatsoever is more than these, cometh of
evil." It may be very true, that if all lawyers practiced this
higher theory, the numliers and Inisiness of the profession would
be vastly abridged. If the fraudulent exactor could find no one
to become the professional tool of unjust designs ; if the guilty
man, seeking to evade justice, were told by his advocate that his
defence of him should consist of nothing but a watchful care
that he had no more than justice meted out to him ; it is j^ossible
cHents would be few, and litigation rare. But is it certain that
any good man would regret such a result ? It might follow, also,
that he who undertook to practice the law on this Christian

MORALITY OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION. 21

theory would find that he had a narrow and arduous road along
which to walk. We, at least, should not lament, should Christian
young men conclude so. Then, perhaps, the holy claims of the
gospel ministry might command the hearts of some who are
now seduced by the attractions of this attractive but dangerous
profession.

rOSITIVISMO ENGLAND.

" "POSITIYISM," s:iys M. Guizc^t, in liis Meditatioiis, "is a
JL word, in langiiugc, a l)ail)iirisni ; in philosopliy, a pre-
sumption." Its genius is sntHcicntly indicated ])y its chosen
name, in Avliich it qualifies itself, not like other sciences, by its
object, but by a boast. Tho votaries of physics have often dis-
closed a tendency to a materialism which depreciates moral and
spiritual truths. The one-sidedness and egotism of the liiiman
understanding ever incline it to an exaggerated and exclusive
range. Man's sensuous nature concurs with the fascination of
tlio empiiical metliod applied to sensible ol)jects, to make him
overlook tlie s])iritual. Physicists become so inflated Mith their
])rilliant success in det(;cting and ex])laining the laws of second
causes that they forget tlie implication of a first cause, which
constantly presents itself to the reason in all the former ; and
they thus lapse into the hallucination that they can construct a
system of nature from second causes alone. This tendency to
naturalism, which is but an infirmity and vice of the fallen mind
of man, no one has avowed so defiantly in our age as M. Au-
gust(! f'omt(!, tho pretended founder of the J^nsifire Ph'domplnj,
and his followers. His attempt is nothing less than to estabhsh
naturalism in its most absolute sense, to accept all its tremen-
dous r(!sults, and to re[)udiate as a iu>nentity all human be-
lief which ho cannot bring within the rigor of exact physical
science.

Although it is not just to confound the man and the opinions,
we always feel a natural curiosity touching the character of one

This urticle appeared iu ths Southern PrcHbyterian Review, for April, 18G9, re-
viewing: I. Cdurs de Philoniyphic Positive. Par M. Angnste Comte. 6 vols. 8vo.
Palis. 183()-'12. II. Ilistory of Civilization in Enfjlnnd. By Houry Thomas
Buckle. Lomlou : John W. Parker & Sous. 1858. III. A Sz/nton of Logic,
Rdtiocinative and Inductive. By Johu Stuart Mill. New York. 1846. IV. An
Historical and Critical Vieio of the Specuhdive PJtilosop}iy of Europe in Vie Nine-
teenth Century. liy J. D. Morell. A. M. New York. 1848.

22

POSITIVISM IN ENGLAND. 23

who claims our confidence. Guizot says of liim, when he ap-
peared before that statesman with the modest demand that he
should found for him a professorship of the lUstory of Physical
and MaUieiiiatiCdl Schnce, in the College of France: "He ex-
plained to me drearily and confusedly his views upon man,
society, civilization, religion, philosophy, history. He was a
man single-minded, honest, of profound convictions, devoted to
his own ideas, in appearance modest, although at heart prodi-
giously vain ; he sincerely believed that it was his calling to open
a new era for the mind of man and for human society. Whilst
listening to him, I could hardly refrain from expressing m}'' aston-
ishment, that a mind so vigorous should, at the same time, be so
narrow as not even to perceive the nature and bearing of the
facts with which he was dealing, and the questions which he was
authoritatively deciding ; that a character so disinterested should
not be warned by his own proper sentiments — which were moral
in spite of his system — of its falsity and its negation of morality.
I did not even make any attempt at discussion with M. Comte ;
his sincerity, his enthusiasm, and the delusion that blinded him,
inspired me with that sad esteem that takes refuge in silence.
Had I even jutlged it fitting to create the chair which he de-
manded, I should not for a moment have dreamed of assigning
it to him.

" I should have been as silent, and still more sad, if I had then
known the trials through which M. Auguste Comte had already
passed. He had been, in 1823j a prey to a violent attack of
mental alienation, and in 1S28, during a paroxysm of gloomy
melancholy, he had thrown himself from the Pont des Arts into
the Seine, but had been rescued by one of the king's guard.
More than once, in the course of his subsequent life, this mental
trouble seemed on the point of recurring."

The reader, allowing for the courteous euphemism of Guizot,
will have no difficulty in realizing from the above what manner
of man Comte was. His admiring votary and biographer, M.
Littre, reveals in his master an arrogance and tyranny which
claimed every literary man who expressed interest in his specu-
lations as an intellectual serf, and which resented every subse-
quent appearance of mental independence as a species of rel)el-
lion and treachery, to be visited with the most vindictive anger.

24 POSITIVISM IN ENGLAND.

That liis mental conceit was beyond the "intoxication" -which
M. Guizot terms it-, a positive insanity, is manifest from his own
language. On hearing of the adhesion of a Parisian editor to
his creed, he writes to his wife : " To speak j)laiidy and in gen-
eral terms, I believe that, at the point at which I have now ar-
rived, I have no occasion to do more than to continue to exist;
the kind of preponderance wliicii I covet cannot henceforth fail
to devolve upon me." .... "Marrest no longer feels any re-
pugnance in admitting the indispensable fact of my intellectual
superiority." And to John Stuart Mill, at one time his sup-
porter, he wrote of " a common movement of philosophical re-
generation everywhere, when once Positivism shall have planted
its standard — that is, its lighthouse I should term it — in the
midst of the disorder and the confusion that reigns ; and I hope
that this will be the natural result of the publication of my work
in its complete state." (This work is his Course of Positive
PJi'dosojjhy, finished in 1842.)

Positivism takes its pretext from the seeming certainty of the
exact sciences, and the diversity of view and uncertainty which
have ever appeared to attend metaphysics. It points to the brilliant
results of the former, and to the asserted vagueness and barrenness
of the latter. It reminds us that none of the efforts of philosophy
have compelled men to agree, touching absolute truth and reli-
gion ; but that the mathematical and physical sciences carry per-
fect assurance, and complete agreement, to all minds which in-
form themselves of them sufficiently to understand their proofs.
In these, then, we have a satisfying and fruitful quality. Positiv-
ism ; in those, only delusion and disappointment. Now, adds the
Positivist, when we see the human mind thus mocked by futile
efforts of the reason, we must conclude, either that it has adopted
a wrong organon of logic for its search, or that it directs that
search towards objects which are, in fact, inaccessible, and prac-
tically non-existent to it. Both these suppositions are true of
the previous philosophy and theology of men. Those questions
usually treated by philosophy and theology which admit any so-
lution— which are only the questions of sociology — must receive
it from Positivism. The rest are illusory. History, also, as they
claim, shows that this new philosophy is the only true teacher.
For when the course of human opinion is reviewed, it is always

POSITIVISM IN ENGLAND. ' 25

found to move through these stages. In its first stage, the hu-
man mind tends to assign a theoh)gical sokition for every natu-
ral problem which exercises it ; it resolves everything into an
effect of supernatural power. In its second stage, having out-
grown this simple view, it becomes metaphysical, searches in
philosophy for primary truths, and attempts to account for all
natiiral effects by a j^^'iori ideas. But in its third, or adult
stage, it learns that the only road to truth is the empirical method
of exact science, and comes to rely exclusively upon that. Thus,
argue they, the history of human opinion points to Positivism
as the only teacher of man.

But Comte, while he denies the possibility of any science of
psychology, save as a result of his Positivism, none the less begins
with a psychology of his own. And this is the psj'chology of
the sensationalist. He virtually adopts as an d priori truth (he
who declares that science knows no a priori truths) the maxim of
Locke, NiJdl in intelhctu quod von jprius in sensu, and holds
that the human mind has, and can have, no ideas save those
given it by sensitive perceptions, and those formed from percep-
tions by reflexive processes of thought. Science accordingly
knows, and can know, nothing save the phenomena of sensible
objects, and their laws. It can recognize no cause or power
whatever, but such as metaphysicians call second causes. It
has no species of evidence except sensation and experimental
proof. "Positive philosophy is the whole body of human
knowledge. Human knowledge is the result of the study of the
forces belonging to matter, and of the conditions or laws gov-
erning those forces."

" The fundamental character of the positive philosophy is that
it regards oW. phenomena as subjected to invariable natural laws,
and considers as absolutely inaccessible to us, and as having no
sense for us, every inquiry into what are termed either primary
or final causes."

" The scientific path in which I have, ever since I began to
think, continued to walk, the labors that I obstinately pursue to
elevate social theories to the rank of physical science, are evi-
dently, radically and absolutely opposed to everything that has
a religious or metaphysical tendency." " My positive philosophy
is incompatible with every theological or metaphysical philoso-

26 POSITIVISM IN ENGLAND.

pliY." "Religiosity is not only a weakness, but an avowal of
want of power." " The 'positive state ' is tliat state of the mind
in which it conceives that 'phenomena are governed by constant
laws, from which prayer and adoration can demand nothing."

Such are some of the declarations of his chief principles, made
by Comte himself. They are perspicuous and candid enough
to remove all doubt as to his meaning.

He also distributes human science under the following classes.
It begins with mathematics, the science of all that which has
number for its object ; for here the objects are most exact, and
the laws most rigorous and general. From mathematics, the
mind naturally passes to physics, which is the science of ma-
terial forces, or dynamics. In tliis second class, the first sub-
division, and nearest to mathematics in the generality and ex-
actness of its laws, is astronomy, or the Tiiecaniipie celeste. Next
comes mechanics, then statics, and last chemistry, or the science
of molecular dynamics. This brings us to the verge of the third
grand division, the science of organisms ; for the wonders of
chemistry approach near to the results of vitality. This science
of organism, then, is biology, the science of life, whether vegeta-
ble, insect, animal, or human. The fourth and last sphere of
scientific knowledge is sociology, or the science of man's rela-
tions to his fellows in society, including history, politics, and
whatever of ethics may exist for the Positivist. Above sociology
there can be nothing, because, beyond this, sensation and ex-
perimental proof do not go, and where they are not, is no real
cof^nition. Comte considers that the fields of mathematics and
physics have been pretty thoroughly occupied by Positivism;
and hence the solid and brilUant results which these departments
have yielded imder the hands of modern science. Biology has
also been partially brought under this method, with some strik-
ing results. But sociology remains very much in chaos, and un-
fruitful of certain conclusions, because Positivism has not yet
digested it. All the princij^les of society founded on psychology
and theology are, according to him, worthless ; and nothing can
be established, to any purpose, until sociology is studied solely
as a science of physical facts and regular physical laws. "s\ithout
concerning ourselves with' the vain dreams of laws of mind, free
agencv, and divine providence.

POSITIVISM IN ENGLAND. 27

Such, in outline, are the principles of Positivism. Let us con-
sider a few of its corollaries. One of these, which thej do not
deign to conceal, is a stark materialism. Their philosophy
knows no such substance as spirit, and no such laws as the laws
of mind. For, say they, man can know nothing but perceptions
of the senses, and the reflexive ideas formed from them. " Posi-
tive philosophy," which includes all human knowledge, is " the
science of material forces and their regular laws." Since spirit
and the actings of spirit can never be 'plienomena, properly so
called, events cognizable to our senses, it is impossible that
science can recognize them. This demonstration is, of course,
as complete against the admission of an infinite spirit as any
other; and the more so, as Positivism repudiates all absolute
ideas. Nor does this system care to avail itself of the plea, that
there may possibly be a God who is corporeal. Its necessarily
atheistic character is disclosed in the declaration that true
science cannot admit any supernatural agency or existence, or
even the possibility of the mind's becoming cognizant thereof.
Since our only possible knowledge is that of sensible j9^(?nf>wicwa,
and their natural laws, material nature must, of course, bound
our knowledge. Her sphere is the all. If there could be a su-
pernatural event — to suppose an impossibility — the evidence of
it would destroy our intelhgence, instead of informing it. For
it would subvert the uniformity of the natural, which is the only
basis of our general ideas, the norm of our beliefs. Positivism
is, therefore, perfectly consistent in absolutely denjdng every
supernatural fact. Hence the criticism of its votaries, when, like
Strauss and Eenan, they attempt to discuss the facts of the
Christian religion, and the life of Jesus Christ. Their own lit-
erary acquirements, and the force of Christian opinion, deter
them from the coarse and reckless expedient of the school of
Tom Paine, who rid themselves of every difficult fact in the
Christian history by a flat and ignorant denial, in the face of all
historical evidence. These recent unbelievers admit the estab-
lished facts ; but ha\ang approached them with the foregone
conclusion that there can be no supernatural cause, they are
reduced, for a pretended explanation, to a set of unproved hy-
potheses and fantastic guesses, which they offer us for verities,
in most ludicrous contradiction of the very spirit of their " posi-
tive philosophy."

28 POSITIYISM IX EXGLAXD.

What can be more distiuctly miracnloiTS tlian a creation ?
Tliat ^vhicli brings nature out of nUul must of course be super-
natural. Positivism must therefore deny creation as a fact of
Avhich the human intelligence cannot possibly have evidence.
As the universe did not begin, it must, of course, be fi'om eter-
nity, and therefore self-existent. But, being self-existent, it "^ill
of course never end. Thus matter is clothed "^ith the attributes
of God.

The perspicacious reader has doubtless perceived that these
deductions, "s^-heu stripjDed of their high-sounding language, are
identical with the stupid and vulgar logic which one hears oc-
casionally from atheistic shoemakers and tailors : " How do you
know there is a God ? Did you ever see him ? Did you ever
handle him ? Did you ever hear him directly making a noise ?"
Those who have heard the philosophy of tap-rooms, redolent of
the fumes of bad whiskey and tobacco, recognize these as pre-
cisely the arguments, uttered in tones either maudlin or profane.
Is not the logic of Positivism, when stated in the language of
common sense, precisely the same ?

Once more, Positivism is manifestly a system of rigid fatal-
ism ; and this also its advocates scarcely trouble themselves to
veil. Human knowledge contains nothing but pJieiiomena and
their natural laws, according to them. " The positive state is
that state of mind in which it conceives that j^^'-^'^omena are
governed by constant laws, from which prayer and adoration
can demand. nothing." "The fundamental character of positive
philosophy is, that it regards all phenomena as subject to inva-
riable laws." Such are Comte's dicta. The only causation, he
knows is that of physical second causes. These, of course
operate blindly and necessarily. This tremendous conchision
is confirmed by the doctrine of the eternity and self-existence
of nature ; for a substance which has those attributes, and is
also material, must be what it is, and do what it does, by an im-
manent and immutable necessity. Positivism must teach us,
therefore, if it is consistent, that all the events which befall us
are directed by a physical fate ; that there is no divine intelli-
gence, nor goodness, nor righteousness, nor will concerned in
them ; that our hopes, our hearts, our beloved ones, our very
existence, are all between the jaws of an irresistible and inex-

POSITIVISM IX ENGLAND. 29

orable macliine ; that our free-ageucy, in short, is iUusorj, and
our free-will a cheat.

But the positive philosophy, with its sweeping conclusions,
iufluenees the science of this generation to a surprising degree.
We are continually told that in France, in Germany, and espe-
cially in Great Britain, it is avowed by multitudes, and boasts
of prominent names. The tendencies of physicists are, as has
been noted, towards NaturaUsm ; the boldness with which the
schools of Comte lifted up theu' standard, has encouraged many
to gather around it. Its most deplorable result is the impulse
which it has given to irrehgion and open atheism. Thousands
of ignorant persons, who are incapable of comprehending any
connected philosophy, true or erroneous, are emboldened to
babble materialism and impiety, by hearing that the "positive
pliilosophy" knows ''neither angel nor spirit," nor God. And
this is one of those sinister influences which now humes Euro-
pean and American society along its career of sensuous exist-
ence. We detect the symptoms of this error in the strong di-
rection of modern physical science to utilitarian ends. Even
Lord Macaulay, in his essay on Bacon, seems to vaunt the fact
that the new Organon aimed exclusively at "fruit." He con-
trasts it in this respect with the ancient philosophy, which pro-
fessed to seek truth primarily for its intrinsic value, and not
for the sake of its material applications. He cites Seneca, as
repudiating so grovelling an end, and as declaring that if the
philosopher speculated for the dii'ect purpose of subserving the
improvements of the arts of life, he would thereby cease to be
a philosopher, and sink himself into an artisan, the fellowcrafts-
man of shoemakers and such like. And tho witty essayist re-
marks that, for his part, he thinks it more meritorious to be a
shoemaker, and actually keep the feet of many people warm,
than to be a Seneca, and ■v\Tite the treatise De Ira, which, he
presumes, never kept anybody fi-om getting angry. The truth,
of course, lies between the unpractical spirit of the ancient, and
the too practical spirit of the modern philosphy. Man has a
body, and it is as well to study its welfare ; but he also has a
mind, and it is better to study the well-being of that nobler
part. Truth is valuable to the soul in itself, as well as in its
material applications. To deny this, one must forget that man

30 rOSITIVISM IN ENGLAND.

will have an immortal, rational existence, without an animal na-
ture, when truth will be his immediate and only 2><^^uluiii ; so
that an exclusive tendency to physical applications of science
savors of materialism. To represent the splendid philosophy
of the ancients as nugatory is also a mischievous extravagance.
It did not give them all the mental progress of the moderns !
True. Perhaps no philosophy, without revelation, could do
this. But it gave them the ancient civilization, such as it was.
And surely, there was a grand difference in favor of Pericles,
Plato, and Cicero, as compared with Hottentots and Austra-
lians ! pagans who, like the Positivists, have neither a psycho-
logy nor a natural theology.

When we look into Great Britain, we see startling evidence of
the power of the new philosophy. John Stuart Mill presents
one of these evidences. He has long since (in his Logic) com-
mitted himself to some of its most fatal heresies ; and these he
reaffirms and fortifies in his more recent Examination of Sir
William ILaniltoiis PJiilosoj^Jiy. He holds in the main to the
dogmas of the Sensualistic Philosoph}-. He flouts the primitive
judgments of the human mind. He intimates, only too plainly,
the ethics of utilitarianism. Pie disdains the idea of power in
causation, and reduces man's intuitive judgment of adequate
cause for every known effect to an empirical inference. Matter
he defines, indeed, as being known to the mind as only a possi-
bility of affecting us with sensations, thus parting company, in a
very queer wa}', with his natural kindred, the more materialistic
positivists. "While upon the subject of fatalism and free-will,
his "trumpet gives an uncertain sound," he deserves the credit
of correcting some of the errors of both the opposing schools,
and stating some just truths upon these doctrines. His associa-
tion with the anti-Christian school represented by the Westviin-
ster lievieio is well known. Wo are now told that Mill is quite
" the fashion " at one, at least, of the universities, and is the ad-
mitted philosopher of liberalism.

Another of these evil portents in die literary horizon is Henry
Thomas Buckle, in his Ifidory of Civilization in England. His
theory of man and society is essentially that of the Positivist.
He regards all religion as the outgrowth of civilization, instead
of its root ; and is willing to compliment Christianity with the

POSITIVISM IN ENGLAND. 31

praise of being the best religions effect of the British mind and
character — provided Christianity can be suggested without its
ministers, whose supposed bigotry, ecclesiastical and theological;
never fails to inflame his philosophic bigotry to a red heat — al-
though he anticipates that English civilization AA'ill, under his
teachings, ultimately create for itself a religion much finer than
that of Christ. He, of course, disdains psychology ; he does
not believe a man's own consciousness a trustworthy witness;
and he regards those general facts concerning human action
which are disclosed, for instance, by statistics, the only materials
for a science of man and society. He commends intellectual
skepticism as the jnost advantageous state of mind. He is an
outspoken fatalist, and regards the hope of modifying immuta-
ble sequences of events by prayer as puerile. He regards " posi-
tive " science as a much more hopeful fountain of well-being and
progress than virtue or holiness.

It is significant, also, to hear so distinguished a naturalist as
Dr. Hooker, now filling the high position of President of the
British Association, in his inaugural address, terming natural
theology " that most dangerous of two-edged weapons," discard-
ing metaphysics, as " availing him nothing," and condemning all
who hold it as "licyond the pale of scientific criticism," and de-
claring roundly that no theological or metaphysical proposition
rests on positive proof.

As Americans are always prompt to imitate Europeans,
especially in their follies, it is scarcely necessary to add that
the same dogmas are rife in our current literature. Even an
Agassiz has been seen A^i'iting such words as these : " We trust
that the time is not distant when it will be universally under-
stood that the battle of the evidences Avill have to be fought
on the field of physical science, and not on that of the meta-
physical."

All these instances are hints of a tendency in English and
American philosophy. "We have refeiTed to Positivism as giving
us their intelligible genesis. Our purpose is, in the remainder of
this article, to discuss, not so much individual Englishmen, or
their particular theories, as the central jirinciples of that school
of thought from which they all receive their impulse. To de-
bate details and corollaries is little to our taste ; and such debate

32 POSITIVISM IX ENGLAND.

never results in permanent factory. He ■^lio prunes the off-
shoots of error has an endless task ; a task which usually results
only in surrounding himself with a thicket of thorny nibbish.
It is better to strike at the main root of the evil stock from
■which this endless outgroA^-th sprouts. Hence, vre propose to
examine a few of the general objections against the body of
the system, rather than to follow, at this time, the special ap-
plications of one or another of the representative men named
above.

Let us, then, look back again at Positivism fully pronounced.
"SVe have pointed to that gnlf of the blackness of darkness, and
of freezing despair, towards which it leads the human mind ; a
gulf without an immortality, without a God, without a faith,
without a providence, without a hope. AVere it possible or moral
for a good man to consider such a thing dispassionately, it would
appear to be odd and ludicrous to him to witness the surprise
and anger of the Positivists at perceiving that reasonable and
Christian people are not supposed to submit with entire meek-
ness to all this havoc. There is a great affectation of philosophic
calmness and impartiality. They are quite scandaUzed to find
that the theologians cannot be as cool as themselves, while all
our infinite and priceless hopes for both worlds are dissected
away under their philosophic scalpel. Such bigotry is very
naughty in their eyes. Such conduct sets Christianity in a very
sorry light, beside the fearless and placid love of truth displayed
by the apostles of science. This is the tone affected by the Pos-
itiAists. But we observe that whenever these philosophic hearts
are not covered with a triple shield of supercilious arrogance,
they also burn with a scientific bigotry worthy of a Dominic, or
a Philip II. of Spain. They also can vituperate and scold, and
actually excel the bad manners of the theologians. The scien-
tific bigots are fiercer than the theological, besides being the ag-
gressors. "^^"e would also submit, that if we were about to enter
upon an Arctic winter in Labrador, with a cherished and depend-
ent family to protect from that savage clime, and if a philoso-
pher should insist upon it that he should be permitted, in the
pure love of science to extinguish, by his experiments, all the
lamps from which we were to derive light, warmth, or food, to
save us from a frightful death, and if he should call us testy

rOSITIYISM IX ENGLAND. 33

blockheads because we did not witness those experiments wij?;'.
equanimity, with any number of other hard names ; nothing but
our compassion for his manifest hmacy should prevent our break-
ing his head before his enormous folly was consummated. Seri-
ously, the monstrous pretensions of this philosophy are not the
proper objects of forbearance. "We distinctly avow, that the only
sentiment with which a good and sober man ought to resist these
aggressions upon fundamental truths is that of honest indigna-
tion. We pretend to affect no other.

The first consideration which exposes the baseless character
of Positivism is, that we find it arrayed against the rudimeutal
instincts of man's reason and conscience, as manifested in all
ages. That the mind has some innate norms regulative of its
own thinking ; that all necessary truth is not inaccessible to it ;
that a universe does imply a creator, and that nature saggests
the supernatural ; that man has consciously a personal will, and
that there is a personal will above man's, governing him from
the skies ; these are truths which all ages have accepted every-
where. Now, we have always deemed it a safe test of pretended
truths, to ask if they contravene what all men have everywhere
supposed to be the necessary intuitions of the mind. If they do,
whether we can analj-ze the sophisms or not, we set them down
as false philosophy. When Bishop Berkeley proved, as he sup-
posed, that the man who breaks his head against a post has yet
no valid evidence of the olijective reality of the post, when Spi-
noza reasoned that nothing can be evil in itself, the universal
common sense of mankind gave them the lie ; there was needed
no analysis to satisfy us that they reasoned falsely, and that a
more correct statement of the elements they discussed would
show it, as it has in fact done. This consideration also relieves
all our fears of the ultimate triumph of Positivism. It will re-
quire something more omnipotent than these philosophers to
make the human reason deny itself permanently. Thank God,
that which they attempt is an impossibility ! Man is a religious
being. If they had applied that "positive" method, in which
they boast, to make a fair induction from the facts of human
nature and history, they would have learned this, at least as cer-
tainly as they have learned that the earth and moon attract each
other : that there is an ineradicable ground in man's nature,

Vo}.. III.— 3.

34 POSITIVISM IN ENGLAND.

I: hich will, iu tlie main, impel him to recognize the supernatural^
is as fairly an established fact of natural history as that man is,
corporeally, a bimanous animal. His spiritual instincts cannot
but assert themselves, in races, in individuals, in theories, and
even in professed materialists and atheists, whenever the hour
of their extremity makes them thoroughly in earnest. No ; all
that Positivism, or any such scheme, can effect is, to give rej^ro-
bate and sensual minds a pretext and a quibble for blinding
their own understandings and consciences, and sealing their own
perdition, while it affords topic of debate and conceit to serious
idlers in their hours of vanity. Man will have the supernatu-
ral again ; he will have a religion. If you take from him God's
miracles, he will turn to man's miracles. " It is not necessary
to go far in time, or wide in space, to see the supernatural of
superstition raising itself iu the place of the supernatural of re-
ligion, and credulity hurrying to meet falsehood half-way."
The later labors of Comte himself give an example of this asser-
tion, which is a satire upon his creed sufficientl}' biting to avenge
the insults that Christianity has suffered from it. After begin-
ning his system with the declaration that its principles necessa-
rily made any religion impossible, he ended it by actually con-
structing a religion, with a calendar and formal ritual, of which
aggregate humanity, as impersonated iu his dead mistress, was
the deity! "He changed the glory of an incorruptible God into
an image, made like to corruptible man."

Here also it should be remarked, that it is a glaring misstate-
ment of the history of the human mind, to say that when true
scientific progress begins, it regularly causes men to relinquish
the theory of the supernatural for that of metaphysics, and then
this for Positivism. It was not so of old ; it is not so now ; it
never will be so. It is not generally true, either of individuals
or races. Bacon, Kepler, Sir Isaac Newton, Leibnitz, Cuvier,
were not the less devout believers to the end, becauso each made
splendid additions to the domain of science, The sixteenth cen-
tury in Europe was marked by a grand intellectual activity in the
rioht scientific direction. It did not become less Christian in
its thought; on the contrary, the most perfect systems of reli-
gious belief received an equal impulse. The happ}^ Christian
awakening in France which followed the tragical atheism of the

POSITIVISM IX ENGLAND. 35

first Eevolution, and wliicli Positivism so tends to quencli in an-
other bloody chaos, did not signalize a regression of the exact
sciences. The history of human opinion and progress presents
us with a chequered scene, in which many causes commingle,
workine" across and with each other their incomplete and confused
results Sometimes there is a partial recession of truth. The
tides of thought ebb and flow, swelhng from secret fountains of
the deep, which none but Omniscience can fully measure. But
amid all the uncertainties, we clearly perceive this general result,
that the most devout belief in supernatural verities is, in the
main, concurrent with healthy intellectual progress.

2. We have seen that fatalism is a clear corollary of the posi-
tive philosophy. It avows its utter disbelief of a personal and
intelligent will above us ; yea, it is glad to assert the impossi-
bility of reconciling so glorious a fact with its principles. It
makes an impotent defence of man's own free agency. But our
primitive consciousness demands the full admission of this fact.
If there is anything which the mind thinks with a certainty and
necessity equal to those which attend its belief in its own exist-
ence, it is the conscious fact of its own freedom. It knows that
it has a spontaneity within certain limits ; that it does itself
originate some effects. Ko system, then, is C(^rrect which has
not a place for the full and consistent admission of this primitive
fact. But this fact alone is al^undant to convince the Positivist
that he is mistaken in declaring the supernatural impossible,
and in omitting a divine will and first cause from his system.
Nature, says he, is the all ; no knoM'ledge can be outside the
knowledge of her facts and laws ; no cause, save her forces.
These laws, he asserts, are constant and invariable. But, re-
member, he also teaches, that science knows nothing as effect
save sensible j>^^'^^^omena, and nothing as cause save "the forces
belonging to matter." Now, the sufficient refutation is in this
exceedingly familiar fact, that our own wills are continually
originating effects, of which natural forces, as the Positivist de-
fines them, are not the efficients ; and that our wills frequently
reverse those forces to a certain extent. Let us take a most
familiar instance, of the like of which the daily experience of
every workingman furnishes him with a liundred. The natural
law of liquids requires water to seek its own level ; requires this

36 POSITITISM IN ENGLAND.

only, and ahvajs. But the peasant, by the intervention of hia
own free will, originates absolutely an opposite eifect : he causes
it to ascend from its level in the tube of his pump. He adopts
the just, empirical, and " positive " method of tracing this pTie-
norneaon to its true cause. He observes that the rise of the wa-
ter is effected by the movement of a lever ; that this lever, how-
ever, is not the true cause, for it is moved l)y his arm ; that this
arm also is not the true cause, being itself but a lever of flesh
and. bone ; that this arm is moved by nerves ; and finally, that
these nervous chords are but conductors of an impulse which
his consciousness assures him that he himself emitted by a func-
tion of his mental spontaneity. As long as the series of j»j>Ag-
-itomenci were affections of matter, they did not disclose t(^ him
the true cause of the w^ater's rise against its own law. It was
only when he traced the chain back to the mind's self-originated
act that he found the true cause. Here, then, is an actual, ex~
perimental^j^/ienome^io/i, which has arisen without, yea, against,
natural law. For, according to the Positivist, it discloses only
the forces of matter ; this cause was above and outside of mat-
ter. It was, upon his scheme — not ours — literally supernatural.
Yet, that it acted was experimentally certain — certain by the
testimony of consciousness. And if her testimony is not experi-
mental and " positive," then no j)^^^i^ornenoii in physics is so,
CA^en though seen by actual eyesight, because it is impossible
that sensation can inform the mind, save through this same con-
sciousness. But now, when this peasant is taught thus " posi-
tively " that his own intelligent will is an original fountain of ef-
fects outside of and above nature — the Positivist's nature — and
when he Hfts his eyes to the orderly contrivances and wonderful
ingenuity displayed in the works of nature, and sees in these
the " experimental " proofs of the presence of another intelli-
gence there kindred to his own, but immeasurably grander, how
can he doubt that this superior mind also has, in its will, another
primary source of effects above nature ? This is as valid an in-
duction as the physicist ever drew from his maxim, " Like
causes, like effects." We thus see that it is not true that the
" positive method " presents any impossibility, or even any dif-
ficulty, in the way of admitting the supernatural. On the con-
trary, it requires the admission, that is to say, unless we commit
the outrage of denying our ov.n conscious spontaneity.

POSITIYISM Dr ENGLAND. 37

3. The positive pliilosopliy scouts all metaplijsical science,
namel}', psycliologr, logic, morals, and natural theology, as
having no certainty, no Positivism, and as beiug, therefore,
nothing viorth. These fictitious sciences, as it deems them, have
no 2)^(<^>^omena, that is, no effects cognizable by the senses; and
therefore it deems that they can have no experimental proofs,
and can be no sciences. But we assert, that it is simply im-
j)OSsible that any man can construct any other branch of know-
ledge without having a science of psychology and logic of his
own. In other words, he must have accepted some laws of
thought, as sufficiently established, in order to construct his
own thoughts. This he may not have done in words, but he
must have done it in fact, T\'hat can be more obvious than
that the successful nse of any implement implies some correct
knowledge of its equalities and powers? And "tliis is as true of
the mind as of any other implement. When the epicure argues,
in the spirit of Positivism, *' I may not eat stewed crabs to-day
with impunity, because stewed crabs gave me a frightful colic
last week," has he not posited a logical law of the reason ?
When the mechanic assumes without present experiment, that
steel will cut wood, has he not assumed the validity of his own
memory concerning past experiments ? These familiar instances,
seized at hap-hazard, might be multiplied to a hundred. Every
man is a psychologist and logician — unless he is idiotic ; he
cannot trust his own mind, except he believes in some powers
and properties of his mind. These beliefs constitute his science
of practical metaphysics.

We urge further, that the uniformity of men's convictions
concerning ^y7<t^/i(9;/ie;i« and experimental conclusions thereupon,
obviously impHes a certain Uiiiformity in the doctrines of this
common psychology. For, whenever one accepts a given pro-
cess of " positive " proof as valid, this is only because he has
accepted that function of the mind as A^alid by which he apj)re-
liends that j)roof. Unless he has learned to trust the mental
power therein exercised, he cannot trust the conclusion. If,
then, physics do possess the glory — claimed for this science by
the followers of Comte — of "positivity'' ; if their evidences are
so exact that all men accept them, when understood, with C(m-
fidence, this is only because they all have accepted with yet

38 POSITIVISM IN ENGLAND.

fuller confidence those mental laws by wliicli the physicist thinks.
So that the very Positivism of the positive philosophy implies
that so much, at least, of metaphysics is equally " positive."

The Positivist, of course, has a psychology, although he re-
pudiates it. " If he had not ploughed with our heifer, ho had
not found out our riddle." And this psychology, so far as it is
peculiar to him, is that of the sensualistlc school. The partial
inductions, errors, and natural fruits of that school are well
known to all scholars. This is not the first instance in which
it has borne its apples of Sodom, materialism and atheism.
Hume, starting from the fatal maxim of Locke, very easily and
logically concluded that the human reason has no such intui-
tion as that of a cause for every effect, and no such valid idea
as that of power in cause ; for in a causative (so-called) se-
quence, is anything seen by the senses other than a regular and
immediate consequent after a given antecedent ? Hence he de-
duced the pleasant consequences of metaphysical skepticism.
Hence he deduced that no man could ever believe in a miracle.
Hence he inferred, that since world-making is a "singular ef-
fect," of which no one has had ocular observation, all the won-
ders of this universe do not entitle us to suppose a First Cause.
Hence Hartley and Priestly, in England, deduced the conclusion
that the mind is as material as the organs of sense, and perishes
with them, of course. Hence the atheism Avhich in France pre-
pared the way ft)r the Eeigu of Terror, and voted God a non-
entity, death an eternal sleep, and a strumpet the goddess of
Eeason. We do not wonder that the Positivist, viewing psy-
chology through this school, should have a scurvy opinion of
it ; indeed, we quite applaud him for it. The fact that he still
employs it, notwithstanding his ill opinion, only proves how
true is the assertion that no man can think without having a
psychology of his own.

The relationship of the positive philosophy to these mis-
chievous and exploded vagaries, appears especially in its argu-
ment against the credibility of supernatural effects or powers.
Thus, says the Positivist, since our oidy knowledge is of the
plienomena and laws of nature, the supernatural is to us inac-
cessible. Let us now hear H^ime : " It is experience only which
gives authority to human testimony, and it is the same experi-

POSITIVISM IN ENGLAND. 39

ence which assures us of the laws of nature. When, therefore,
these two kinds of experience are contrary, we have nothing to
do but svibtract the one from the other, with that assurance
which arises from the remainder. But according to the prin-
ciples here explained, this subtraction, with regard to all popu-
lar religions, amounts to an entire annihilation ; and, therefore,
we may establish it as a maxim, that no human testimony can
have such force as to prove a miracle, and make it a just founda-
tion for any such system of religion."

The only true difference here is, that the recent Positivist is
more candid ; instead of insinuating the impossibility of the su-
pernatural in the form of the exclusion of testimony, ho flatly
asserts it. " The supernatural," says he, "is the anti-natural^''
In reply, we would point to the obvious fact, that this view can
have force only with an atheist. For, if there is a Creator, if he
is a personal, intelligent, and voluntary Being, if he still super-
intends the world he has made (the denial of either of these pos-
tulates is atheism or pantheism), then, since it must always be
possible that he may see a moral motive for an unusual inter-
vention in his own possessions, our experience of our own free
will makes it every way probable that he may, on occasion, inter-
vene. No rational man who directs his own affairs, customarily
on regular methods, but occasionally by unusual expedients,
because of an adequate motive, can fail to concede the proba-
bility of a similar free-agency to God, if there is a God. This
noted demonstration of Positivism is, therefore, a " vicious
circle." It excludes a God because it cannot admit the super-
natural ; and lo ! its only ground for not admitting the supernat-
ural is the gratuitous assumption, that there is no God. But,
in truth, man's reliance on testimony is not the result of expe-
rience ; the effect of the latter is not to produce, but to limit, that
reliance. The child believes the testimony of its parent before
it has experimented upon it — believes it by an instinct of its
xeason. How poor, how shallow, then, is the beggarly arith-
metic of this earlier Positivist, Hume, when he proposes to strike
a balance between the weight of testimony for the supernatural
and the evidence for the inflexible uniformity of nature ! The
great moral problems of man's thought are not to be thus dis-
patched, like a grocer's traffic. The nature of the competing

40 POSITIVISM IN ENGLAND.

evidence is also profoundly misunderstood. Our belief in the
necessary operation of a cause is not based on simjDle experience,
but on the intuition of the reason. The Positivist sees in the
natural flora of England and France only exogenous trees. May
he, therefore, conclude that nature has no forces to produce en-
dogenous? The testimony of those who visit the tropics would
refute him. The truth is — and none should know it so well as
the physicist, since it is taught expressly by the great founder
of this inductive logic, Bacon — a generalization simply experi-
mental can never demonstrate a necessary tie of causation be-
tween a sequence ol ^jhenomena, however often repeated before
us. It can suggest only a probability. "We must apply some
canon of induction to distinguish between the apparently imme-
diate antecedent and the true cause, before the reason recognizes
the tie of causation as permanent. If, therefore, reason — not
empiricism — suggests from any other source of her teachings that
the acting cause may be superseded by another cause, then she
recognizes it as entu-ely natural to expect a new effect, although
she had before witnessed the regular recurrence of the old one
a million of times. If, therefore, she learns that there may,
even possibly, be a personal God, she admits just as much
possibility that his free will may have intervened as a superior
cause.

The truth is, nature implies the supernatural. Nature shows
"US herself the marks and proofs that she cannot be eternal and
self-existent. She had, therefore, an origin in a creation. But
what can be more supernatural than a creation ? If it were, in-
deed, impossil)le that there could be a miracle, then this nature
herself would be non-existent, whose uniformities give the pre-
text for this denial of the miraculous. Nature tells us that her
causes are second causes; they suggest their origin in a first
cause. Just as the river suggests its fountains, so do the laws of
nature, now flowing in so regular a current, command us to ascend
to the Source who instituted them.

4, We carry farther our demonstration of the necessity of
practical metaphysics to physical science, by an a]:)peal to more
express details. "W^e might point to the service done to the sci-
ences of matter by the Kovum Organum of Bacon. "What phy-
sicist is there who does not love to applaud him, and fondly to

POSITITISM IN ENGLAND. 41

contrast tlie fruitfulness of liis inductive method with the inii-
tihty of the old dialectics ? But Bacon's treatise is substantially
a treatise on this branch of logic. He does not undertake to
establish specific laws in physical science, but to fix the princi-
ples of reasoning from facts, by which any and every physical
law is to be established. In a word, it is metaphysics; the
only difference being that it is true metaphysics against erro-
neous. So, nothing is easier to the perspicuous reader than to
take any treatise of any Positivist upon physical science, and
point to instances upon every page, where he virtually employs
some principle of metaphysics. Says the Positivist, concerning
some previous solution offered for a class of phenomena : "This
is not valid, because it is only hypothesis." Pray, Mr. Posi-
ti\'ist, Avhat is the dividing line between hypothesis and inductive
proof? And why is the former, without the latter, invalid ? Can
you answ'er without talking metaphysics? Says the Positivist:
" The ^j>(9.5i{ hoc does not prove the j^roj^^e;' hoc.''' Tell us why?
We defy you to do it without talking metaphysics

The Positivist fails to apply his own maxims of philosophy
•universally; his observations of the effects in nature are one-
sided and fragmentary. He tells us that philosophy must be
built on facts ; that first we must have faithful and exact ob-
servation of pai-ticulars, then correct generalizations, and last,
conclusive inductions. Eight, say we. But the primary fact
which accompanies every observation which he attempts to
make he refuses to observe. When it was reported to the great
Leibnitz that Locke founded his essay on the maxim, Nihil in
intellectu quod non jprius in sensv, he answered : JTisi inteHectus
esse. These three words disclose, like the spear of another
Ithuriel, the sophism of the whole sensualistic system. In at-
tempting to enumerate the affections of the mind, ib overlooked
the mind itself. At the first fair attempt to repair this omission,
Positivism collapses. Does it attempt to resolve all mental
states into sensations ? Well, the soid cannot have a conscious-
ness of a sensation without necessarily developing the idea of
conscious self over against that of the sensuous object. "As
soon as the human being says to itself 'I,' the human being
affirms its own existence, and distinguishes itself from that ex-
ternal world whence it derives impressions of which it is not

42 POSITIVISM IN ENGLAND.

tlie author. In this primary fact are revealed the two primary
objects of human knowledge ; on the one side, the human being
itself, the individual person that feels and perceives himself; on
the other side, the external world that is felt and perceived : the
subject and the object." That science may not consistently
omit or overlook the fir.st of these objects is proved absolutely
l)y this simple remark, that our self- consciousness presents that
object to us, as distinct, in every perception of the outer world
■R"hich constitutes the other object; presents it even more im-
mediately than the external object, the perception of which it
mediates to us. We must first be conscious of self, in order to
perceive the not self. Whatever certainty we have that the lat-
ter is a real object of knowledge, we must, therefore, have a
certaintv even more intimate, that the former is also real- Why,
then, shall it be the only real existence, the only substance in
nature, to be ostracised from our science ? This is preposterous.
Is it pleaded that its affections are not pltenomenay not cogniz-
able to the bodily senses? How shallow and pitiful is this;
when those bodily senses themselves owe all their vahdity to
this inward consciousness !

We now advance another step. Everj' substance must have
its attributes. The ego is a real existence. If our cognitions
are regular, then it must be by virtue of some primary princi-
ples of cognition, which are subjective to the mind. "VMiile we
do not employ the antiquated phrase, " innate ideas," yet it is
evident that the intelligence has some innate norms, which de-
termine the nature of its ideas and aff3ctions, whenever the
objective world presents the occasion for their rise. He who
denies this must not only hold the absurdity of a regular series
of effects without a regulative cause in their subject, but he
must also deny totally the spontaneity of the mind. For what
can be plainer than this ; that if the mind has no such innate
norms, then it is merely passive, operated on from without, but
never an au;ent itself. Kow then, do not these innate norms of
intelligence and feeling constitute primitive facts of mind? Are
they not proper objects of scientific observation ? Is it not
manifest that their earnest comprehension will give us the laws
of our thinking, and feeling, and volition ? Why have we
not here a field of experimental science as legitimate as that

POSITIVISM IN ENGLAND. 43

material world wkicli is even less certainly and intimately
known ?

Dr. Hooker would discard natural theology as entirely delu-
sive. But now we surmise that this science has some general
facts which are as certain as any in physics, and certain upon the
same experimental grounds. He believes in the uniformity of
:species in zoology. If one told him of a tribe of one-armed men
in some distant countr}-, he would demur. He would tell the re-
lator, that experimental observation had established the fact that
members of the same species had by nature the same structure.
He would insist upon solving the m^'tli of the one-armed nation
by supposing that the witness was deceived, or was endeavor-
ing to deceive him, or had seen some individuals who were one-
armed by casualty, and not by nature. But psychologists profess
to have established, by an observation precisely like that of the
naturalist, this general fact, that all human minds have those
moral intuitions which we call " conscience." Tiie utmost that
science can require of them is, that they shall see to it that their
observations are faithful to fact, and their generalization of them
is correct. When they submit the result to this test, why is not
the law of species as valid for them as for Dr. Hooker? Why
shall he require us to be any more credulous concerning the
natural lack of this moral "limb" than he was of the story of
the one-armed tribe ? But if conscience is an essentird, primi-
tive fact of the human soul, then it compels us to recognize a
personal God, and his moral character, by as strict a scientific
deduction as any which the physicist can boast. For, obligation
inevitably implies an obligator ; and the character of this intui-
tive imperative, which speaks for him in our reason, must be a
disclosure of his character, since it is the constant expression of
his moral volition.

5. This instance suggests another capital error of Positivism,
in that it proposes to despise abstract ideas, and primitive judg-
ments of the reason ; and yet it is as much constrained as any
other system of thought, to build everything upon them. Mathe-
matics, the science of quantity, is the basis of the positive phil-
osophy, according to M. Comte ; for it is at once the simplest
and most exact of the exact sciences. Now when we advert to
this science, we perceive at once that it deals not with visible

44 POSITIVISM IX ENGLAND.

and tangible magnitudes and quantities of oilier classes, but
%vitli abstract ones. The point, the line, tlie surface, the poly-
gon, the curve of the geometrician, are not those which any hu-
man hand ever drew with pen, pencil, or chalk hue, or which
human eye ever saw. The mathematical point is without either
length, breadth or thickness ; the line absolutely without thick-
ness or breadth ; the surface absolutely without thickness ! How
impotent is it for M. Comte to attempt covering up this cnishing
fact by talking of the jj/ieno7/te?u-i of mathematics! In his sense
of the word lyhenomena, this science has none. The intelhgent
geometrician knows that, though he may draw the diagram of
his polygon or his curve with the point of a diamond, upon the
most polished plane of metal which the mechanic arts can give
him, yet is it not exactly that absolute polygon or curve of which
he is reasoning. How can he know that the ideas which he
predicates, by the aid of his senses, of this imperfect type, are
exactly true to the perfect ideal of figures? He knows that the
true answer is this : abstract reasoning assures him that the dif-
ference between the imperfect visible diagi'am and the ideal ab-
solute figure, is one which does not introduce any element of
error, when the argument taken fi'om the diagram is applied to
the ideal. But, on the contrary, the reason sees that the more
the imperfection of the diagram is abstracted, the more does the
argument approximate exact truth. But we ask, how does the
mind thus pass from the^7ie/iC'7/ic/<«Z diagram to the conceptual;
fi'om the imperfect to the absolute idea ? Positivism has no an-
swer. So, the ideas of space, time, ratio, velocity, momentum,
substance, upon which the higher calcvlns reasons, are also ab-
stract. Positivism would make all human knowledge consist of
the knowledge of phenomena and their laws. Well, what is a
law of nature? Itis not itself ?i, 2)^eTiomenon ; it is a general idea
which, in order to be general, must be purely abstract. How
preposterously short-sighted is that observation which leaves
out the more essential elements of its own avowed process?
These instances, to which others might be added, show that the
admission of some dj^riori idea is necessary to the construction
of even the first process of owx j^henomenal knowledge.

But the most glaring blunder of all is that wliich the Positivist
commits in denying the prior validity of our axiomatic beliefs

rOSITIYISM IN ENGLAND. 45

or primitive judgments, ami representing tliem as only cmpirit-al
conclusions. Tliat j)sycliology and logic of common sense in
wliicli every man believes, and on wliicli every one acts, without
troubling himself to give it a technical statement, holds that to
conchide implies a premise to conclude from; and that the valid-
ity of tlie conclusion cannot be above that of this premise. Every
laan's intuition tells him that a process of reasoning must have
a starting point. The chain which is so fastened as to sustain
any weight, or even sustain itself, must have its first point of
support at the top. That which depends must depend on some-
thing not dependent. But why multiply words upon this truth,
which every rational system of mental science adopts as a part
of its alphabet? It can scarcely be more happilj- expressed
than in the words of a countryman of Comte's, M. Royer Collard :
"Did not reasoning rest upon principles anterior to the reason,
anahsis would be without end, and the synthesis without com-
mencement." These primitive judgments of the reason cannot
be conclusions from observation, from the simple ground that
they must be in the mind beforehand, in order that it may be
able to make conclusions. Here is a radical fact wliioh explodes
the whole "positive" philosophy.

Its advocates cannot but see this, and hence they labor with
vast contortions, to make it appear that these primitive judg-
ments are, nevertheless, empirical conclusions. Comte's expe-
dient is the following: "If," says he, "on the one side, every
positive theory must necessarily be founded upon observation,
it is, on the other side, equally plain that to apply itself to the
task of observation, our mind has need of some 'tlieorv.' If, in
contemplating i\\e j)henomena, we do not immediately attach them
to certain principles, not only would it be impossible for us to
combine these isolated observations, so as to draw any fruit
therefrom, but we should be entirely incapable of retaining
them, and, in most cases, the facts would remain before our eves
unnoticed. The need, at all times, of some ' theory ' whereby to
associate facts, combined with the evident impossibility of the
human mind's forming, at its origin, theories out of observations,
is a fact which it is impossible to ignore." He then j^i'oceeds
to explain that the mind, perceiving the necessity of some pre-
vious "theories," in order to associate its own observations,

46 POSITIVISM m ENGLAND.

invents them, in tlie form of theoretical conceptions. Having-
begnn, bj means of tliese, to observe, generalize and ascertain
positive truths, it ends by adopting the latter, which are sohd,
and repudiating the former, which its developed intelligence haa
now tanght it to regard as unsubstantial. His idea of the pro-
gress of science, then, seems to be this : the mind employs these
assumed " theories " to climb out of the mire to the top of the solid
rock, as one employs a ladder, and having gained its firm foot-
ing, it kicks them away! But what if it should turn out that
this means of ascent, instead of being only the ladder, is the sole
pillar also, of its knowledge ? When it is kicked away, down
tumbles the whole superstructure, with its architect in its ruins.
And the latter is the truth. For if these " theories " are prior to our
observation, and are also erroneous, then all which proceeded
upon their assumed validity is as baseless as they. It is amus-
ing to note the simple effort of Comte to veil this damning
chasm in his system, by calling the assumed first truths " theo-
ries." They are, according to his conception, manifestly nothing
but hypotheses. "Why did he not call them so ? Because, then,
the glaring solecism would have been announced, of proposing
to construct our whole system of demonstrated beliefs upon a,
basis of mere hypothesis. Nobody could have been deceived.
Nor does the subterfuge avail which his follower. Mill, in sub-
stance proposes. It is this : that as the sound physicist pro-
pounds an hypothesis, which at first is only probaljle, not to be
now accepted as a part of science, but as a temporary help for
preparing the materials of an induction ; and as this induction
not seldom ends by proving that the hypothesis, which was at
first only a probable guess, was indeed, the happy guess, and
does contain the true law ; so the whole of our empirical know-
ledge may be constructed by the parallel process. In other
words, the pretension of Mill is, in substance, that all our prim-
itive judgments are at first only the mind's hypothetical guesses ;
and that it is empirical reasoning constructed upon them after-
wards, which converts them into universal truths. Now, the
simple and complete answer is this : that this proving or testing
process, by which we ascertain whether our hypothesis is a true
law, alwavs implies some principle to be the criterion. How,
we pray, was the test appHed to the first hypothesis of the series,

POSITIYIS:\r IN ENGLAND. 47

"W'lien, as jet, tliere "was no ascertained principle to apply, but
only li}i3othesis ? Quid rides? Mr. Mill's process must ever
be precisely as preposterous as the attempt of a man to bang a
cbain upon nothing. Ko ; the hypothetical ladder is not the
foundation of our scientific knowledge. Grant us a foundatiou
and a solid structure built on that foundation, the ladder of hy-
pothesis may assist us to carry some parts of the building higher ;
that is all. And the parts which we add, carrying up materials
by means of the ladder, rest at last, not on the ladder, but on
the foundation.

The accepted tests of a primitive intuition are three : that it
shall be a first truth, i. e., not learned from any other accepted
belief of the mind ; that it shall be necessary, i. e., immediately
seen to be such that it not only is true, but must be true ; and
that it shall be universal, true of every particular case always
and everywhere, and inevitably believed by all sane men, when
its enunciation is once fully understood. The sensualistic school
seem all to admit, by the character of their objections, that if
the mind has beliefs which do fairly meet these three tests,
then they will be proved really intuitive. But they object :
these beliefs do not meet the first test, for they are empirically
learned by every man, in the course of his own observation, like
all inductive truths. And here they advance the plea of their
amiable founder, Locke, who little dreamed, good man, what
dragon's teeth he was sowing. It is this : that the formal an-
nouncement of sundry axioms, in words, to unthinking minds,
instead of securing their immediate assent, would evoke only a
vacant stare. "We have to exhibit the application of the axioms
in concrete cases before we gain an intelligent assent. Very
true, but why ? It is only because the concrete instance is the
occasion for his correctly apprehending the abstract meaning of
the axiomatic enunciation. Is not the argument preposterous,
that because the reason did not immediately see, while as yet the
verbal Tnedium of intellection was darkness, therefore, the object
is not an object of direct mental vision? Because a child is not
willing to affirm which of " two pigs in a poke " is the bigger, it
shall be declared, forsooth, that the child is blind, or that pigs
are not visible animals !

Now, against all this idleness of talk, we demonstrate by proof

48 POSITITISM IN ENGLAND.

botli as empirical aucl deductive as that of tlie Positivist for an y
law in physics, that observation and experience are not, and can
not be, the source of intuitive beliefs. Let ns grant just such a
case as Locke claims against us. AYe meet an ignorant, sleepy,
heedless servant, and we ask, "Mj boy, if two magnitudes be
each equal to a third magnitude, must they, therefore, be neces-
sarily equal to each other?" We suppose that he will, indeed,
look at us foolishly and vacantly, and, if he says anything, pro-
fess ignorance. Our words are not in his vocabulary ; the idea
is out of his ordinary range of thought. "We say to him, "Well,
fetch me three twigs from yonder hedge, and we will explain.
Xame them No. 1, No. 2, No. 3. Take your pocket knife, and cut
No. 1 of equal length to No. 3. Lay No. 1 yonder on that stone.
Now cut No. 2 exactly equal to No. 3. Is it done ?" " Yes, sir."
*' Now, boy, consider ; if you should fetch back No. 1 from the
stone yonder, and measure it against No. 2, do you think you
would find them equal in length ?" If you have succeeded in
getting the real attention of his mind, he will be certain to an-
swer with confidence, " Y'es, sir, they will be found equal." " Are
you certain of it?" "Y"es, sir, sure." "Had you not better
fetch No. 1 and try them together ?" " No, sir ; there is no
need; they are obliged to be equal in length." "Why are you
sure of it, when you have not actually measured them together ?"
" Because, sir, did I not cut No. 1 equal to No. 3, and is not No.
2 equal to No. 3 ? Don't you see that No. 1 and No. 2 cannot
difier?" Let the reader notice here that there has been no ex-
pe7nmenial trial of the equalit}' of the first and second twigs in
length ; hence it is simply impossil)le that the servant's confi-
dence can result from experiment. It is the immediate intuition
of his reason, because there is absolutely no other source for it.
Obviously, therefore, the only real use for the three twigs and
the knife was to illustrate the terms of the proposition to his
ignorant apprehension. Let the reader note also that now the
servant has got the idea, he is just as confident of the truth of
the axiom, concerning all possible quantities of which he has
conception, as thoiigh he had tested it by experiment on all.
This suggests the farther argument, that our intuitive beliefs can
not be from experiment, because, as we shall see, we all hold
them for universal truths, but each man's experience is limited.

POSITIVISM IN ENGLAND. 49

Tlie first time a child ever divides an apple, and sees that either
part is smaller than the whole, he is as certain that the same
thing will be true of all possible magnitudes as well as apples,
as though he had spent ages in dividing apples, acorns, melons,
and everything which came to his hand. Now, how can a uni-
versal truth flow experimentally from a single case ? Were this
the source of belief, the greatest multitude of experiments which
could be made in a life-time could never be enough to demon-
strate the rule absolutely, for the number of possible cases yet
untried would still be infinitely greater. Experience of the past
by itself does not determine the future.

Moreover, several intuitive beliefs are incapable of being ex-
perimentally inferred, because the case can never be brought
under the purview of the senses. " Divergent straight lines,"
we are sure, " will never enclose any space, though infinitely pro-
duced." Now, who has ever inspected an infinite straight line
•with his eyes ? The escape attempted by Mill, with great labor,
is this : one forms a mental diagram of that part of the pair of
divergent lines which lies beyond his ocular inspection (beyond
the edge of his paper, or blackboard), and by a mental inspec-
tion of this p^irt, he satisfies himself that they still do not meet.
And this mental inspection of the conceptual diagram, saith he,
is as properly experimental as though it were made on a mate-
rial surface. On this queer subterfuge we might remark that it
is more refreshing to us than consistent for them, that Positi-
vists should admit that the abstract ideas of the mind can be
subjects of experimental reasoning. We had been told all along
that Positivism dealt only with ^;>/!t';'^(9w^g;^(2. It is also news to
us that Positivism could admit any j^ower in the mind of con-
ceiving infinite Hnes ! "Wliat are these, but those naughty things,
absolute ideas, which the intelligence could not possibly have
any lawful business with, because they were not given to her by
sensation ? But chiefly Mill's evasion is worthless in presence
of this question : how do wo know that the straight lines on
the conceptual and infinite part of this imaginary diagram will
have the identical property possessed hy the finite visible parts
on the blackboard ? What guides and compels the intelligence
to this idea ? Not sense, surely, for it is the part of the concep-
tual diagram, which no eye will ever see. It is just the reason's

Vol. III.^.

50 rOSITIVISM IN ENGLAND.

own a priori and intuitive power. Deny this, as Mill does, and
the belief — which all know is solid — becomes baseless.

In a word, this question betrays how inconsistent the sensual-
istio philosopher is, in attempting to derive first truths from sen-
sational experience, and ignoring the primitive judgments of the
reason. How has he learned that sensational experience is itself
true ? Only by a primitive judgment of the reason ! Here,
then, is one first belief, which sense cannot have taught us, to
wit, that what sense shows us is true. So impossible is it to
construct any system of cognitions while denying to the reason
all primary power of judgment.

When we propose the second test, that intuitive judgments
must be "necessary," Positivism attempts to embarrass the
inquiry by asking what is meant by a necessary truth. One
answers — with "Whewell, for instance, — it is a truth the denial
of which involves a contradiction. It is, of course, easy for
Mill to rejDly to this heedless definition, that then every tnith
may claim to be intuition, for is not contradiction of some
truth the very character of error? If one should deny that the
two angles at the base of an isosceles triangle are equal, he
could soon be taught that his denial contradicted an admitted
property of triangles ; and this, indeed, is the usual way we
establish deduced truths, which are not intuitive. We affirm
the definition of common sense, that a necessary truth is one
the denial of which is immediately self-contradictory. Not only
does the denial clash with other axioms, or other valid deduc-
tions, but it contradicts the terms of the case itself, and this
according to the immediate, intuitive view which the mind has.
Does not every one know that his mind has such judgments
necessary in this sense? When he says, "the whole 7nust he
greater than either of its joarts," his mind sees intuitively that
the assertion of the contrary destroys that feature of the case
itself which is expressed in the word "parts." Who does not
see that this axiom is inevitable to the reason, in a different
way from the proposition, "The natives of England are white,
those of Guinea black ? " The latter is as true, but obviously not
as necessary as the former.

Or, if Whewell answers the question, what is meant b}- a
truth's being " necessary," that it is one the falsehood of which

rOSITITISM IN ENGLAND. 51

is "inconceivable," Mill attempts to reply, that this is no test of
the primariuess of a truth, no test of truth at all, because our
capacity of conceiving things to be possible, or otherwise, de-
pends notoriously upon our mental habits, associations, and
acquirements. Ho points to the fact that all Cartesians, and
even Leibnitz, objected against Sir Isaac Newton's theory of
gravitation and orbitual motion, when first propounded, that it
was "inconceivable" how a body propelled by its own rixornoi-
tuvi should fail to move on a tangent, unless connected with its
centre of motion by some substantial bond. There is a truth
in this and similar historical facts. It is that the antecedent
probability of the truth of a statement depends, for our minds,
very greatly upon our habits of thought. And the j)i'f>'Ctical
lesson it should teach us is moderation in dogmatizing, and
candor in investigating. But for all this, Mill's evasion will bo
found a verbal quibble, consisting in a substitution of another
meaning for the word " inconceivable." We do not call a truth
necessary, because, negatively, we lack the capacity to conceive
the actual opposite thereof ; but because, positively, we are able
to see that the opposite proposition involves a self-evident, im-
mediate contradiction. It is not that we cannot conceive how
the opposite comes to be true, but that we can see, that it is.
impossible the opposite should come to be true. And this ifi
wholly another thing. The fact that some truths are necessary
in this self-evident light, every fair mind reads in its own con-
sciousness.

As the third test of first truths, that they are universal, the
sensualists ring many changes on the assertion, that there is
debate what are first truths ; that some propositions long held
to be such, as : " No creative act is possible without a pre-
existent material;" "Nature abhors a vacuum;" "A material
body cannot act immediately Bave where it is present;" are
now found to be not axiomatic, and not even true. The answer
is, that all this proves, not that the human mind is no instru-
ment for the intuition of truth, but that it is an imperfect one.
The same line of objecting would prove with equal fairness — or
unfairness — that empirical truths have no inferential validity ;
for the disputes concerning them have been a thousand-fold
wider. Man often thinks incautiously; he is partially blinded

52 POSITIVISM IN ENGLAND.

by prejudice, liabit, association, hypothesis, so that he has blun-
dered, a few times as to first truths, and is constantly blunder-
ing, myriads of times, as to derived truths. "^Yhat then ? Shall
ve conclude that he has no real intuition of first triiths, and by
that conclusion compel ourselves to admit, by a proof reinforced
a Miousand-fold, that he certainly has no means, either intuitive
or deductive, for ascertaining derived truths ? This is blank
skepticism. It finds its practical refutation in the fact, that
amidst all his blindness man does ascertain many truths, the
benefits of which we actually possess. No ; the conclusion cf
common sense is, that we should take care when we think.
But the fact remains, that there are axiomatic truths, which no
man disputes, or can dispute ; which command universal and
immediate credence when intelligently inspected; which, v.o
see, must be true in all possible cases which come within their
terms. For instance : every sane h iiman being sees, by the
first intelligent look of his mind, that any whole must be
greater than one of its own parts ; and this is true of all possi-
ble wholes in the universe which come within the category of
quantity, in any form whatsover. Is it not just this fact which
makes the proposition a general one, that man is a reasoning
creature? What, except these common and primitive facts cf
the intelligence, could make communion of thought, or com-
munication of truth from mind to mind, possible? It is these
original, innate, common, primary-, regulative laws of belief.

The most audacious and the most mischievous assertion of
MiU against absolute truths, is his denial to the mind of any in-
tuitive perception of causation and power. Tlie doctrine of
common sense here is, that when we see an effect, we intuitively
refer it to a cause, as producing its occurrence. And this cause
is necessarily conceived as having power to produce it, under
the circumstances. For it is impossible for the reason to think
that nothing can evolve something. Nothing can result only in
nothing. But the effect did not produce its own occurrence, for
this would imply that it acted before it existed. Hence, the
reason makes also this inevitable first inference, that the power
of that cause will produce the same effect which we saw, if all
the circumstances are the same. But the sensualistic school
asserts that the mind is entitled to predicate no tie between

POSITIVISM IX ENGLAND. 53

cause and effect, save immediate invariable sequence, as observed;
because this is all tlie senses observe, and JSlhil in intellectu quod
noil ^rias in sensu. The inference, that the like cause will, in
future, be followed bv the like effect, is, according to them, an
empirical result only of repeated observations, to which the mind
is led by habit and association.

Now our first remark is, that only a sensuahstic philosopher
could be guilt V of ar'^'uinfy that there can be no real tie of caus-
ation, because the senses see only an immediate sequence. The
absurdity (and the intended drift also) of such arguing appears
thus : tliat, by the same notable sophism, there is no soxd, no
God, no abstract truth, no substance, even in matter, but only a
bundle of properties. For did our senses ever sec any of these?
How often must one repeat the obvious fact, that if there is such
a thing as mind, it also has its own properties ; it also is capable
of being a cause ; it also can produce ideas according to the law
of its nature, when sense f ur]iishes the occasion ? Sensation in-
forms us of the presence of the effect ; the reason, according to
its own imperative law, supposes power in the cause.

It is extremely easy to demonstrate, and that by the Positiv-
ist's own method, that mental association is not the ground, but
the consequence, of this idea of causation. We all see cer-
tain "immediate, invariable sequences" recurring before us
with perfect uniformity; yet we never dream of supposing a
causative tie. We see other sequences twice or thrice, and we
are certain the tie of ]:)Ower is there. Light has followed dark-
ness just as regularly as light has followed the approach of the
sun. Xobody dreams that darkness causes light; everybody be-
lieves that the sun does cause it. It thus appears, experiment-
ally, that association has not taught U' ; the notion of c:^use ; but
that our knowledge of cause corrects our associations and con-
trols their formation.

The experience of a certain phenomenon following another a
number of times can never, by itself, produce a certainty that,
under similar circumstances, it will always follow The mere
empirical induction gives only probability. The experience of
the past, were there no intuition of this law of causation by
which to interpret it, would only demonstrate the past; there
would be no logical tie entitling us to project it on the future.

54 POSITIYISM IN ENGLAND.

"We ask ovir opponents, if it be the experience of numerous in-
stances wliicli gives us certaiuty of a future recurrence, how many
instances will effect the demonstration ? Is their answer, for in-
stance, that one hundred uniform instances, and no fewer,
would be sufficient? What, then, is the difference between the
ninety-ninth and the hundredth ? According to the very suppo-
sition, the two instances are exactly alike ; if they were not, the
unlike one could certainly contribute nothing to the proof, for it
would be excluded as exceptional. Why is it, then, that all the
ninety-nine do not prove the law, but the hundredth instance, ex-
actly similar to all the rest, does ? There is no ansAver. Tho
truth is, the reason why an empirical induction suggests the
probability that a certain, oft-repeated sequence contains the
true law of a cause (which is all it can do), is but this : intui-
tion has assured us in advance, that the second ^heiioinenon of
the pair, the effect, must have some cause ; and the fact observed,
that the other is its seeming next antecedent, "indicates a pre-
sumption that this may he the true cause. For the true cause
must be the immediate next antecedent, either visible or unno-
ticed. But there may be another more immediate antecedent
than the one first noticed, not yet detected. We, therefore, re-
sort to some test grounded on the intuitive law of cause, to
settle this doubt. Just as soon as that doubt is solved, if it be
by the second observation, the mind is satisfied ; it has ascer-
tained the causative antecedent ; it is now assured that this ante-
cedent, if arising under the same conditions, will inevitably pro-
duce this consequent, always and everywhere, and ten thousands
of uniform instances, if they do not afford this test, generate to
such certainty. Yea, there are cases in which the conviction of
causative connection is fully established by one trial, when the
circumstances of that one trial are such as to assure the mind
that no other iindetected antecedent can have intervened, or ac-
companied the observed one. For instance, a traveller plucks
and tastes a fruit of inviting color and odor, which was wholly
unknown to him before. The resvilt is a painful excoriation of
his lips and palate. He remembers that he had not before taken
into his mouth any substance whatever, save such as he knew to
be innocuous. The singleness of the new antecedent enables
liim to decide that it must have been the true cause of his suffer-

POSITIVISM IN ENGLAND. 55

ings. The man thenceforward knows just as ceiiainly that this
fruit is noxious, whenever he sees it, to the millionth instance,
■without ever tasting it a second time, as though he had tasted
and suffered nine hundred thousand times.

Indeed, as Dr. Chalmers has well shown, experience is so far
from begetting this belief in the law of cause, that its usual effect
is to correct and limit it. A child strikes its spoon or knife upon
the table for the first time ; the result is sound, in which children
so much delight. He next repeats his experiment confidently
upon the sofa-cushion or carpet, and is vexed at his failure to
produce sound. Experience does not generate, but corrects his
intiiitive confidence, that the same cause will produce the samje
effect, not by refuting the principle, but by instructing him that
the causative antecedent of the sound was not, as he supposed,
simple impact, but a more complex one, namely, impact of the
spoon and elasticity of the thing struck.

Mill himself admits express^, what Bacon had so clearly
shown, that an induction merely empirical gives no demonstra-
tion of causative tie. To reach the latter, we must apply some
canon of induction, which will discriminate between the j?os£ hoc
and the propte?^ Tioc. Does not Mill himself propose such can-
ons? It is obvious that the logic of common life, by which
plain people convert the inferences of experience into available
certainties, is but the application of the same canons. Let us
now inspect an instance of such application, and we shall find
that it j)roceeds at every step on the intuitive law of cause as its
postulate. Each part of the reasoning which distinguishes be-
tween the seeming antecedent and the true cause is a virtual
syllogism, of which the intuitive truth is the major premise. Let
us select a very simple case ; the reader will see, if he troubles
liimself to examine the other canons of induction, that they ad-
mit of precisely the same analysis. We are searching for the
true cause of an effect which we name D. We cannot march
■directly to it, as the traveller did in the case of the poisonous
strange fruit, because w^e cannot ]3rociu'e the occurrence of the
phenomenon D with only a single antecedent. We must, there-
fore, reason by means of a canon of induction. First, we con-
struct an experiment in which we contrive the certain exclusion
of all antecedent j)henomena save two, which W'e name A and B.

56 POSITIVISM IX ENGLAND.

It still remains doubtful which of these produced the effect D^
or whether both combined to do it. ^'e contrive a second ex-
periment, in which B is excluded, but another ^j'7ie;i07ne?ion,
which we call C, accompanies A, and the effect D again follows.
Kow we can get the truth. Here are two instances. In the
first, A and B occurred, and D follows immediately, all other
antecedents being excluded. Therefore, the cause of D is either
A or B, or the two combined (thus the inductive canon proceeds).
But why ? Because the effect D must have had its immediate
cause, which is our d prioi^i and intuitive postulate. In the sec-
ond instance, A and C occurred together, and T> followed. Here
again, the true cause must be either A or C, or the combined
power of the two, T\'hy ? For the same intuitive reason. But in
the first instance C coidd not have been the cause of D, because
C was absent then ; and in the second instance, B could not have
been the cause, for B was then absent. Therefore, A was the true
cause all the time, ^'hy ? Because we know intuitively that
every effect has its own cause. And now we know, without far-
ther experiment, that, however often A may occur under proper
conditions, D will assuredly follow. Why? Only because we
knew, from the first, the general law that like causes produce
like effects.

It thvis appears that the intuitive belief in this law of cause,
is essential beforehand, to enable us to convert an experimental
induction into a demonstrated general tmth. Can any demon-
stration be clearer, that the original lav; itself cannot have been
the teaching of experience ? It passes human wit to see ho%v a
logical process can prove its ovra premise, when the j^i'emise is
what proves the process. Yet this absurdity Mill gravely at-
tempts to explain. His solution is, that the law of cause is " an
empirical law co-extensive with all human experience." In this
case he thinks an empirical law may be held as perfectly demon-
strated, because of its universality. May we conclude, then, that
a man is entitled to hold the law of cause as ]3erfectly valid only
after he has acquired "all human experience?" This simple
question dissolves the sophism into thin air. It is experiment-
ally proved that this is not the way in which the mind comes by
the belief of the law ; becaiise no man ever acqiiires all human
experience to the day of his death ; but only a part, which, rela-

POSITITISil IX ENGLAND. 57

tivelv to tlie wliole, is exceedingly minute ; and because every
man beKeves the general la^' of cause as soon as lie begins to
acquire experience. The just doctrine, tlierefoi'e, is, tliat ex-
perimental instances are only the occasions upon wliicli the
mind's own intuitive power pronounces the self-evident law.

John Stuart Mill is both a Positivist in his logic, and the ac-
cepted philosopher of English radicalism. The reader has in
the above specimens a fair taste of his quality. With much
learning and labor, he combines subtlety and dogmatism. His
stvle, hke his thoughts, is intricate, ill-defined, and ambiguous,
having a great air of profundity and accuracy, without the real
possession of either. When one sees the confused and mazy
involutions in which he entangles the plainest propositions that
are unfriendly to his sensuaHstic principles, he is almost ready
to suppose him the honest victim of those erroneous postu-
lates, until he observes the astute and perspicacious adroit-
ness vrith which he wrests the evidence of the truth which he
disHkes.

But we return, and conclude this branch of the discussion by
resuming the points. Positivism denies all primary and abso-
lute beliefs. We have now shown that in this it is inconsistent,
because such beliefs are necessary premises to those experimen-
tal processes of proof which alone it aifects to value. It is by
these primitive truths of the reason that the soul reaches a realm
of thought above the perception of the senses, and ascends to
God, to immortality, to heaven.

6. Comte and his followers claim that the physical sciences
have the most fruit, and the most satisfying certainty, because
they have received the " positive " method. Metaphysics, includ-
ing psychology, ethics and natural theology, had remained to his
day worthless and barren of all but endless differences and de-
bates, because they had attempted a different method, and
refused Positivism. Introduce here Butler's idea : ProbahUlty
the practical guide of life. But he undertook to reconstruct so
much of these as he did not doom to annihilation upon the strict
basis of the observation of the bodily senses and experimental
reasoning, under the name of "sociology." In this instance,
with the help of biology, he proposed to deduce all the laws of
mind from physical experiments and observations upon its

58 POSITIVISM IN ENGLAND.

organs, the brain and nervous apparatus ; and from the visible
acts of men's bodies as moved by the mind. Then, from the
laAvs of mind, with the facts of human history, he professed to
construct an experimental and positive science of ethics and gov-
ernment. It is instructive to notice that the Positivists, just so
soon as they approach these sciences of mind, morals, human
rights and government, disagree with each other as much as the
rest of us unpositive mortals. The Priest of Humanity has been
compelled to expel many of his earliest admirers from his
church. Somehow, Positivism itself, when it approaches these
topics, is no longer "positive;" it guesses, dogmatizes, dreams,
disputes, errs, fully as much as its predecessors. What, now,
does this show? Plainly that the experimental methods of the
physical sciences are incajDable of an exact and universal appli-
cation in this field of inquiry. The objects are too immaterial ;
they are no longer defined, as in physics, by magnitude, or fig-
ure, or quantity , or duration, or ponderosity, or velocity. The
combinations of causation are too complex. The effects are too
rapid and fleeting. The premises are too numerous and unde-
fined for our limited minds to grasp with uniform exactness and
certainty. If Positivism, with all its acknowledged learning, and
mastery of the science of matter, with its boasts and its confi-
dence, has failed to conquer these difficulties in the little way it
professes to advance in the science of the human spirit, shall we
not continue to fail in part? " "^^^^-lat can he do that cometh after
the king?"

Let us couple this fact, tliat the sciences of psychology, morals
and natural theology have ever been, and are destined to remain,
the least exact and positive of all the departments of man's
knoAvledge, with this other, that they are immeasurably the most
important to his. well-being and his hopes. The latter statement
commends itself to our experience. It is far more essential to a
man's happiness here, that he shall have his rights justly and
fairly defined than his land accurately surveyed. It is far more
interesting to the traveller to know whether the ship-captain to
whom he entrusts his life has the moral virtue of fidelity than
the learning of the astronomer and navigator. It is more im-
portant to us to have virtuous friends to cherish our hearts than
adroit mechanics to make our shoes. It is more momentous to

POSITIVISM IN ENGLAND. 59

:& clying man to know whether there is an immortality, and how
it may be made happy, than to have a skilful physician, now that
his skill is vain. We see here, then, that human science is least
able to help ns where our need is most urgent. M. Comte re-
prehends the human mind, because " questions the most radi-
cally inaccessible to our capacities, the intimate nature of being,
the origin and the end of all jj/ienomena, were precisely those
which the intelligence propounded to itself as of paramount im-
portance in that primitive condition, all the other problems
Teally admitting of solution being almost regarded as unworthy
of serious meditation. The reason of this it is not difficult to
discover, for experience alone could give us the measure of our
strength." Alas! the reason is far more profound. Man has
ever refused to content himself with examining the properties of
triangles, prisms, levers and pulleys, which he could have ex-
actly determined, and has persisted in asking whence his spirit-
ual being came, and whither it was going ; what was its proper
rational end, and what its laws ; not merely because he had not
learned the limits of his power, but because he was, and is, irre-
sistibly impelled to these inquiries by the instinctive wants of
his soul. His intuitions tell him that these are the things, and
not the others, which are of infinite moment to him. It appears,
then, that it is unavoidable for man to search most anxiously
where he can find least certainty. His intellectual wants are
most tremendous just in those departments where his power of
self-help is least. To what should this great fact point us ? If
we obey the spirit of true science, it will manifest to us the great
truth that man was never designed by God for mental indepen-
dence of him ; that man needs, in these transcendent questions,
the guidance of the infinite understanding ; that while a " posi-
tive philosophy " may measure and compare his material posses-
sions, the only " exact science " of the spirit is that revealed to
us by the Father of Spirits. This, we assure the Positivist, is
the inevitable conclusion to which the sound and healthy reason
will ever revert, as the needle to its pole, despite all his dogma-
tism and sophistry. Introduce here the experimental argument
for the certain failure of materialism from the constitutional ne-
cessities of the soul, and from history of the past, even with so
poor a religion as popery. If there were nothing else to ensure

60 POSITIVISM IN ENGLAND.

it, the intolerable miseries, crimes and despair, into wliicli Posit-
ivism will ever plunge tlie societies which adopt it, will always
bring back this result. He may draw an augury of the destiny
of his \n'etched creed from the parsimony of its present followers.
M. Comte drew up a scheme for the support of the ministers of
his new " "Worship of Humanity," under which the " High Priest
of Humanity " was to receive a salary of about $12,000 a year,
and four national superintendents about $6,000 each. It ap]5ears
from the newspapers that only forty-six persons contributed in
1867, and the total was $750. But meantime the votaries of that
Lord Jesus Christ whom he despises, in the conquered South,
though "scattered and peeled" by their enemies, contribute an-
nually some millions of dollars, and are sending their best intel-
lects and hearts to propagate their faith at the antipodes. Let
the Positivist judge which system has the conquering vitaHty !

LIBERTY AND SLAVERY-

THE last and only time Mr. Bledsoe was introduced into the
Critic, it was in connection with his Theodicy. This work,
which was a thorough-going assertion of Pelagianism, was per-
haps the most honest sophistry we have ever read. It exhibited
some premises so erroneous that conclusions drawn from them
could only be false, and displayed no little theological preju-
dice ; but still the discussion was manly and vigorous, the style
both nervous and rhetorical, and the love of truth apparent even
in the advocacy of error. If a strong and energetic man start
from the wrong point, and take the wrong direction, he will go
only the farther astray, because of his vigorous exertions.

The work which we review possesses the same mental traits and
characteristics of stjde with the former, with this advantage, that
the subject is one which the writer approaches without preju-
dice, and which the nature of his previous studies has qualified
him to discuss. Born in Kentucky, where, as is well known, the
emancipation feeling was almost as strong, until the abolition
excitement began, as in any of the free States, spending the
earlier years of his manhood in Ohio, and then a few years in
Mississippi, and at all times disconnected with those occupa-
tions which interest themselves in slave labor, the author may
be regarded fairly as a man who has seen both sides, and who
stands in an intermediate post of observation. But the aboli-
tionist will probably say, if he meets the usual treatment from
them, that his book now speaks the language of self-interest,
because he holds office under the government of a "slave-
breeding commonwealth." The common utterance of such
charges is as offensive to public morality as to the individuals
at whom they are hurled ; for they seem to take it for granted

' Appeared in The Critic for May, 1856, reviewing An Essay on Liberty and
Sla.very, by Albert Taylor Bledsoe, LL. D., Professor of Mathematics in tlie Uni-
versity of Virginia.

61

62 LIBERT! AND SLAYERY.

tliat candor, public virtue and moral courage are extinct in tlie
South; and since the accusers cannot know a community in
"wliich tliej Lave not lived, and wliicli tliey so muck contemn^
the inference is, that tliej disbelieve the existence of these quali-
ties at the South, because they are not accustomed to meet with
them at home. This is as unjust to the country at large as it
is in this case to Mr. Bledsoe and the community in which he
resides. It should not be supposed, that because the people of
Virginia would deal summarily with a hypocritical incendiary
fi'om abroad, who came with insolent malignitv meddlinoj with
what does not concern him, they will, therefore, refuse the pri^^i-
lecje of free discussion to her own honorable citizens.

Mr. Bledsoe's first chapter lays down first principles for his
subsequent discussion, in a discussion of "the nature of civil
liberty." It may be said in brief, that the theory of society
which he advocates is the Bible theory ; the one which is advo-
cated by the B'lhlical Repertory and bj^ Christian philosophers
generally, in opposition to that infidel theory which ignores a
Creator and moral Governor of mankind, the pet system of
infidel French democrats and pseudo-Christian abolitionists.
The author in substance describes Hberty to be a freedom to do
icJiat a man. has a rigid to do ; and to define the extent of those
rights he goes to the law of God. This chapter is marked most
favorably with the best characteristics of the author, freedom
from prescription, boldness in attacking errors sanctioned by
great names and vigorous scientific inquiry. It rises, indeed,,
very near the highest regions of ethical speculation, in the
directness, simplicity and breadth of the thinking. The remain-
ing chapters on the erroneous positions of abolitionists, the
Bible argument for the lawfulness of slavery, the argument from
the public good, and the fugitive slave law, do not quite fulfil the
promise of the first in their philosophic method. This defect,
if it is one, arises obviously from the author's pk\n of taking up
and refuting the positions of abolitionists in detail ; so that the
discussion, instead of b.nng strictly methodized on a logical plan,,
is rather a series of refutations, each one indeed pimgent and
demolishing, but yet as a whole, partaking of the confusion of
the errors which they explode. The author does not conde-
scend to meaner antagonists, but grapples only with the Ajaxes

LIBERTY AXD SLATERY. 6S

of the opposite host, Drs. Chauning and Wayland, aud Messrs.
Barnes, Snmner, and Seward. The impression which manj of
these special discussions leaves upon the mind of the reader is
that of a strong man tearing away the defences of his helpless
adversary, rending them into almost invisible shreds, and spurn-
ing them as the driven stubble before his bow, till they can be no
longer found. We were peculiarly gratified with the thorough
work which he makes of the criticisms of that most glozing and
treacherous of commentators, Barnes, upon the epistle to Phile-
mon. But Avhile we would be glad that this book should be
read, yea, studied by every man in the United States who is un-
satisfied on the subject of slavery, we would not be understood
as commending in every case the strength of its denunciations,
or as approving all its j30sitions. Pages 151, 152, the author
alludes to the familiar objection by which Dr. 'Wayland and
others attempt to break the force of the unanswerablo argument
from tlie legalizing of slavery in the law of Moses ; that in like
manner the sins of polygamy and divorce are there permitted.
Here Mr. Bledsoe makes the admission that the fact claimed is
true; but that instead of proving slavery a sin, it only proves
the two other practices innocent till they were prohibited by
Christ. This would indeed be the just inference, if we were
compelled to make the admission. But we would by no means,
make it. We are by no means wdlling to surrender it as a set-
tled question, that polygamy is in any sense allowed or legalized
in the Pentateuch; and the scantj permissive legislation about
divorce, explained as it is by our Saviour, is very far from
placing that sin on the same platform with the ownership of
slaves, which is not only limited and restrained (the whole of
what is enacted about divorce), but authorized. Polemically it
is a bad policy to seem to permit the abolitionist to say : " Well,
after all, your notable Old Testament argument only succeeds
in placing slavery in the same category with tbe two Mormon
abominations of polygamy and divorce." There is no logical
necessity on us to allow even the pretext for such a repartee.

In commending this book, with these and a few similar ex-
ceptions, to our readers, we would avail ourselves of the occa-
sion to make two important remarks. One is, that the political
troubles in our federal relations growing out of slavery at the

64 LIDEKTY AND SLAVERY.

Soutli can never be permanently adjusted till tlie abstract ques-
tion, "wlietlier the relation of master and slave is in itself an
unrigliteous one or not?" is fullj met, discussed, and settled in
tlie national mind. There were two courses of conduct, either
of which might have been followed by the defenders of existing
laws. Ono plan would have been to exclude the whole ques-
tion of slavery persistently from the national councils, as extra-
constitutional, unprofitable and dangerous, and to assert this
exclusion always, and at every risk, as the essential condition
of the continuance of the South in those councils. The other
plan was to meet that abstract question from the first, as under-
lying and determining the whole subject, to debate it every-
W'here, until it was decided, and the verdict of the national mind
was passed upon it. Unfortunately, the Southern men did
neither steadily. They permitted the debate, and then failed to
argue it on fundamental principles. With the exception of Mr.
Calhoun — whom events are every year proving the most far-see-
ing of our statesmen, notwithstandiug the fashion of men to
depreciate him as an "abstractionist" while he lived — Southern
politicians were accustomed to say that this whole matter was
one of State sovereignty, according to the constitution ; that
Congress had no right to legislate concerning its merits, and
that, therefore, they should not seem to admit such a right, by
condescending to argue the matter of its merits. The premise
is true; but the inference is practically most erroneous. If
Congress has no right to legislate about slavery, then Congress
should not have been permitted to debate it. And Southern
men, if they intended to stand on that ground, should have ex-
acted the exclusion of all debate. But this was perhaj)s impos-
sible. The debate came ; and of course the inferences of the
premises agitated ran at once back of the constitution. South-
ern men should have industriously followed them there; but
they have not done it ; and now political agitation has gone so
far, and become so complicated, that we fear the time has gone
by when the country will be willing to consider calmly the
fundamental question.

A moment's consideration ought to show that that question is
the abstract lawfulness or unlawfulness of the relation of master
and slave. The constitution gives to the Federal government

LIBERTY AND SLAVERY. 65

no power over that relation in the slave States. True, but that
constitution is a compact between sovereign commonwealths ; it
certainly gives incidental protection and recognition to the rela-
lation of master and slave, and if that relation is intrinsically
unrighteous, then it protects a wrong. The sovereign States of
the North are found in the attitude of protecting a wrong by
their voluntary compact ; and, therefore, it is the duty of all the
righteous citizens of those commonwealths to seek by righteous
means the amendment or repeal of that compact. They are not,
indeed, justified to claim all the benefits of the compact, and
still agitate under it a matter which the compact excludes. But
they are more than justified ; they are bound to clear their skirts
of the wrong, by surrendering the compact, if necessary. There
is no evasion from this duty, except by proving that the consti-
tution does not do unrighteously in protecting the relation; in
other words, that the relation is not intrinsically unrighteous.
Again, on the subject of the "Higher Law," our conservative
statesmen and divines have thro\^Ti out a vast amount of pious
dust. This may serve to quiet the country for a time, but it will
inevitably be blown away. There is a higher lavj, superior to
constitution and legislative laws; not indeed the perjured and
"unprincipled cant which has no conscience about swearing alle-
giance to a constitution and a body of laws which it believes
vrong, in order to grasp the emoluments 'and advantages of
those laws, and then pleads " conscience " for disobeying what it
had voluntarilv sworn to obev ; but the law of everlasting ri^ht
in the word of God. Constitutions and laws which contravene
this ought to be lawfully amended or repealed ; and it is the duty
of all citizens to seek it. Let us a23ply this to the Fugitive Slave
Law. If the bondage is intrinsically unrighteous, then the fed-
eral law which aids in remanding the fugitive to it legalizes a
wrong. It becomes, therefore, the duty of all United States offi-
cers who are required bv law to execute this statute, not indeed
to hold their offices and emoluments, and swear fidelity, and
then plead conscientious scruples for the neglect of these SM'orn
functions, for this is a union of theft and perjury with hypoc-
risy, but to resign those offices, with their emoluments. It be-
■comes the duty of any private citizen who may be summoned by
ii United States officer to act as part of a 2^oi<^e, guard, or in any

Vol. UI —5.

66 LIBEIITY AND SLAVERY.

other way in enforciug this statute, to declhie obedience ; and
then, in accordance "with Scripture, to submit meekly to the
legal penalty of such a refusal, until the unrighteous law is re-
pealed. But, moreover, it becomes the right and duty of these,
and all other citizens, to seek the repeal of that law, or, if neces-
sary, the abrogation of the compact which necessitates it. But
when we have proved that the relation of master and slave is
not intrinsically unrighteous, and have shown that the fugitive
slave law does but carry out fairly the federal compact in this
particular, it becomes the clear duty of every citizen to concur
in obeying it.

Since the slavery discussion has now become inevitable in our
federal politics, it is absolutely essential that the mind of the
nation shall be enlightened and settled on the abstract question.
The halls of Congress should ring with the arguments; the news-
paper press should teem with them, and, above all, with the
Bible arguments, for ours is a Christian nation in the main ; and
the teachings of the sacred Scriptures are, after all, the chief
means for influencing the convictions of the people. It seems,
indeed, late in the day to begin the popular discussion of first
principles afresh, when the immediate questions have almost
reached their crisis ; but we are convinced that if it is too late
now to get the pubhc ear for this discussion, it is too late to save
the country. It is gratifying to notice that the political news-
papers are at length weakening to the necessity of this discussion.
A leading journal of the South a few weeks ago noticed, and
lamented, the policy on w^hich we have been remarking, and said
that since Mr, Calhoun died, not a single j^olitician had been
found to argue the abstract question of right on its merits, while
all that had been done for the peace of the coimtry since in this
matter had been done by divines and scholars. The work of
Mr. Bledsoe is important and timely, as making an able contri-
bution to this fundamental discussion.

The second remark which we would urge is, that if this debate
is to produce any good to the country at large, the propositions
advanced must be marked by a wiser moderation, and the argu-
ments by more soundness than have always been exhibited at
the South. The Southern cause does not demand such asser-
tions as that the condition of master and slave is the normal con-

LIBERTY AND SLAVEEY. 67

dition of human society, in such a sense as to be preferable to
all others, in all time, and under all circumstances. Certain it is
that the burden of odium which the cause will have to carry at
the North will be immeasurably increased by such positions.
Why array against ourselves indomitable prejudices, by the use-
less assertion of a proposition which would be unnecessary to our
cause, if it were true ? Nor can a peaceful and salutary purpose
be ever subserved by arguing the question in a series of compar-
isons of the relative advantages of slave and free labor, laudatory
to the one party and invidious to the other. There has been,
on both sides of this debate, a mischievous forgetfuluess of the
old adage, " Comparisons are odious." When Southern men
thus argue, they assume the disadvantage of appearing as the
propagandists, instead of the peaceful defenders of an institu-
tion which is, and will continue, very naturally, distasteful to
their opponents ; and they array the self-esteem of those oppo-
nents against them, by placing the discussion in an attitude
where the acknowledgement of the Southern cause must be a
confession of Northern inferiority. True, our Northern neighbors
have often been only too zealous to play at this in\ddious game,
or even to begin it in advance. They should not be imitated in
their mistake. It is time that all parties should learn that the
lawfulness and policy of opposite, or competing, social systems
cannot be decided by painting the special features of hardship,
abuse or mismanagement, which either of the advocates may im-
agine he sees in the system of his opponent. The course of
this great discussion has too often been this : each party has
set up an easel, spread a canvass upon it, and proceeded to draw
the system, of its adversary in contrast with its own, in the
blackest colors which a heated and angry fancy could discover
amidst the evils and abuses imputed to the rival institution. The
only result possible is, that each shall blacken his adversary
more and more, and, consequently, that both shall grow more
and more enraged; and this, though all the black shades of
sorrow and oppression be dra\\Ti from facts in the conditions of
the rivals ; for, unfortunately, the human race is a fallen race,
'depraved, unrighteous and oppressive, under all institutions.
Out of the best social institutions there still proceeds a hideous
amount of wrong and woe ; and this, not because those institu-

68 LIBERTY AND SLAVERY.

tions are unrighteous, but because tliey are administered by de-
praved man. For tliis reason, and for another equally conclu-
sive, we assert that the lawfulness, and even the wisdom and
policy of social institutions aflfecting a vast population cannot be
decided by this odious contrast of their special wrong results.
The other reason is, that the field of view is too immense and
varied to be brought fairly into comparison under the limited
eye of man. First, then, if we attempt to settle the matter by
trying how much wrong we can find in the working of the oppo-
site system, there will probably be no end at all to the melan-
choly discoveries which we shall both make, and so, no end to
the debate ; for the guilty heart of man is everywhere & 2)er2)etual
fountain of "s^Tongs. And, second, the comparison of results
must be deceptive, because no finite mind can take in both the
endless wholes.

The policy of the South, then, is, to take no ultra positions,
and to support herself by no unnecessarily invidious compari-
sons. It is enough for her to place herself on this impregnable
stand, that the relation of master and slave is recognized as law-
ful in itself, by the infallible law of God. That truth she can
triumphantly evince ; and from it she can deduce all that it is
right for her to claim. There is no wisdom nor use in her as-
serting that domestic slavery is always and everywhere the best
relation between labor and capital, and should, therefore, be
everywhere introduced ; a proposition against which, to say the
least, indomitable prejudices are arrayed. It is enough for her
to say — what is true, and susceptible of overwhelming demonstra-
tion— that, for the African race, such as it is, in fact, such as
Providence has placed it here, this is the best, yea, the only tol-
erable relation. If it is lawful in the sight of God ; if the con-
stitution of the Union does no moral wrong in recognizing it as
la^-ful ; if it is best for the interests of the African, of the white
race of the South, and of the whole Union, that the matter
should be left untouched by the meddling hand of federal legis-
lation— a hand impotent of good to it, and only nighty for mis-
chief— to develop itself under the leadings of Providence and
the benign influences of Christianity, then the South has all her
rights asserted. If thus much is true, then the federal consti-
tution, and the laws carrying out its provisions, only say what

LIBERTY AND SLAVERY. 69

tlie Bible says, that the holder of African slaves does uot neces-
sarily live in the commission of wrong, and is not, therefore, to
be disfranchised of any right which the law allows to any other
citizen.

It is because Mr. Bledsoe's work is marked l)y this just mod-
eration in its positions that we are Avilling to commend it to the
public. We have here none of the absurdities, of which the
facile exposure has given abolitionists the pretext to sing tri-
umphs, such as the argument that African slavery is righteous,
because Noah foretold it of the descendants of Ham. The
author says, for instance (p. 140), "In opposition to the thesis
of the aboKtionist, we assert that it is not always and everywhere
wrong." " We only contend for slavery in certain cases." And
in the argument from the public good, he says (p. 228) : " We
are not called upon to decide whether slavery shall be estab-
lished in our midst, or not. This question has been decided for
us." .... "The only inquiry which remains for us now
is, whether the slavery which was thus forced upon our an-
cestors shall be continued, or whether it shall be abolished?
The question is not what Virginia, or Kentucky, or any other
slave State Tnight have been, but what they would be in case
it were abolished. If abolitionists would speak to the point,
then let them show us some country in which slavery has been
abolished, and we will abide by the experiment." True, Mr.
Bledsoe does not always speak of his ultra adversaries in
sugared terms. But in our disapproval of the strength of his
words, let us remember the outrageous provocation which has
been given.

POPISH LITERATURE AXD EDUCATIOX.

WHILE the Ivomaii empire continued, it may be said that
Latin was the common tongue of the whole "Western
church. But after the empire fell, the modern languages of Eu-
rope gradually formed themselves and displaced the Latin in
popular use, until it remained only the language of courts and
scholars. But Eome, in her fear of change and blind fondness
for prescriptive things, persisted in retaining all her creeds,
hymns and liturgies in the old tongue, as well as the only ver-
sion of the Scriptures accessible to Europeans. Froin Gregory
the Great, near the end of the sixth century, a continued war-
fare ^^'as waged, until Gregory VII., in the eleventh century,
hnally triumphed by driving all the vernacular languages from
religious worship, and imposing the formularies, with the dead
language of Home, on the whole church. The Scriptures could
only be read, even by the clergy, from the Latin Yiilgate. Even
to this day, the prayers in which the priest leads the aspirations,
or presents the wants of his people to God are in words un-
known to them. No hymn echoes through " fretted vault or
long-drawn aisle," which does not hide its praise in a tongue
barbarian to those who join it.

The constant policy of Home has also been to exalt this lit-
urgy at the expense of the preaching of the gospel in vernacular
languages. The mass is long and pompous ; the sermons few,
brief and trivial. The very structure of her churches betrays
her contempt for this potent means of enhghtening and arousing
the popular mind, for tliey are not auditories in which to hear
the words of instruction, but ghostly theatres for tho display of
superstitious pantomime. The altar and the chancel, the stage
of the sacred mummeries, are the centre of all eyes, and not the
pulpit, the pillar from which shines the lamp of life. Now the
formation of a cultivated vernacular tongue is absolutely neces-
sary to national improvement. The reason is obvious : there

' Appeared in the Critic for September-November, 1856,
70

POPISH LITERATURE AND EDUCATION. 71

cannot be diffusiou of thought, unless there is a language refined
enough to he its medium, and the bulk of a people can never
know two languages, one living and common, the other dead and
learned, so well as practically to use them both. The conse-
quence is, that when the literature of a people is in a dead
tongue, knowledge is not the inheritance of the masses, but the
distinction of the few ; the native language of the people is left
in its rudeness, and they remain as iincultivated as their speech.
Hence, those who have first taught their countrymen to employ
the native language of their homes and their daily life in litera-
ture, a Boccaccio and Petrarch in Italy, a Luther in Germany,
a Wickliife and Chaucer in England, have ever been regarded
hy thinking men as high in rank among the fathers of civilization.
But what ideas and topics so kindle the activity of the mind,
and crave for its teeming productions the fitting dress of a cul-
tivated language as the religious? Among every people, the
£rst sentiments which attune for themselves the voice of elo-
quence, are the aspirations of the soul towards its God. The
oldest regular compositions in the world are the inspired books
of the Hebrews. The first poem in Greece was probably the
Theogony of Hesiod. And there are no sentiments so potent to
unloose the stammering tongue of an awakening people, and to
form its utterance, as those proceeding from man's relations to
Lis Maker. It is hard to conceive how Bome could have devised
a more ingenious and efficient mode to prevent the cultivation
of the modern languages, and thereby, of the mind of Christen-
dom, than when she compelled all people to retain their worship
and religious lore locked up in a dead language. Let us sup-
pose that she had done for every trilie to which she gave Chris-
tianity what the primitive and Protestant missions have done,
had seized their barbarous tongues and ennobled them by mak-
ing them the vehicles of holy truth and sacred worship. Europe
would scarcely have known the dark ages, but the glorious day
of the sixteenth century might have followed the declining hght
of the Augustan era without an intervening night. It may be,
indeed, that when the popes thus postponed the dawn of civili-
zation, "it was not in their hearts, and they meant not so."
"When they commanded all people and tongues to speak to their
God and to listen to his words only in a dead language, it was

72 POPISH LITERATURE AND EDUCATION.

in their liearts to magnify the venerable age and hoary "unity of
their communion. But the result is one among the numerous
instances of that guilty fatality which seems to make Home, in
all her plans and policies, the instinctive and unerring enemy of
all human welfare.

She has always been the enemy of a free Bible. What
Chinese, Indian, Hindu version of the Scriptures have her mis-
sionaries ever given to those on whom they conferred the fatal
gift of Romish dogmas ? Her priests import cargoes of relics
and rosaries, puppets and pictures, missals and vestures, but no
Bibles. From that day when the language of her Latin Vulgate
became a dead one in Europe to ours, in which we have seen
her convulsions of helpless rage and storms of curses against the
present glorious diffusion of God's word, Rome has never will-
ingly given to the world a Bible in a vulgar language. She has
permitted a few versions, as tlie French of Lefevre, of Staples,
and the English Douay. But it was only to countermine the
influence of Protestants. Her people are only permitted to pos-
sess these partial versions, because else they would persist in
reading the Protestant, and even her own are circulated as re-
luctantly as possible. No layman may read them without a
license from his pastor, and no priest except at the will of his
superior ; and then none must dare to think on them for him-
self, or have an opinion of their meaning, except as his soul's
masters dictate. In all her processes of education, her forms
and '■'■fathers " are taught in preference to the Bible, and no re-
ligious literature is desired except the literature of superstition.
The thinking man cannot but see how hostile all this is to mental
improvement. The Bible is the great school-teacher of man-
kind ; its truths are of all others the most stimulating and fructi-
fying, and its presentation of them the most successful. They
move the secret foundations of man's soul, stirring the mightiest
of his hopes and fears, filling the mind with vast and ennobling
conceptions of an infinite God, a perfect holiness, an immutable
truth, an immortal destiny. The Scriptures present examples of
the most forcible reasoning, the grandest eloquence, the most
burning animation, the sweetest poetry, the most tender pathos,
and instances of most admirable virtue and goodness. In one
word, they bring the mind of their reader into contact with God's,

POPISH LITERATURE AND EDUCATION. 73

not mediately, as Rome would have it, througli the dim, deformed
transmission of a murky, human soul, But face to face. What
education can equal it ? In opposing an open Bible, Rome
shows herself the great enemy of popular intelligence. The re-
sults of the Reformation illustrate this charge by contrast. Wick-
liffe, "the morning star of the Reformation," introduced the
dawn by his English New Testament. One of Luther's first acts
was to give the Scriptures in German to his countrymen ; and
this great work, with the attendant discussions, gave form to that
language as a vehicle for literature, and generated a nation of
readers.

But more, while Rome makes religious discussion the privi-
lege of the hierarchy, Protestantism makes it the right and bus-
iness of every man. Hence, its very nature is an appeal from
the ghostly throne beneath which the conscience and reason lay
crushed, to the great tribunal of the common understanding.
The audience to which it speaks is the whole race. It restores
to every man his spiritual liberty, and thereby his responsibility ;
it urges upon him the great issue between his soul and his God,
and in urging, it elevates every man who will hearken to the
level of his immortal destiny. Hence, the first work of the re-
formers was to throw open the Bible, create a popular religious
literature, and invite all Europe to the work of examination, and
thereby of self-education. To see how much the popular intelli-
gence owes to this, imagine that our venerable English version
were blotted out of existence, and along with it, all the noble
thought which it has stimulated in Britain and America ; and
that in its place we had the corrupt, cunning Douay version of
a corrupt Latin translation, only here and there in the hands of
a priest or layman, whose supersition was known to be so dense
as to permit no risk of its illumination.

The Popish prohibition of free enquiry and private judgment
in religion is, if possible, still more fatal to the mind. The
Council of Trent ordained that no one should presume to under-
stand the Scriptures, except according to the doctrines of Rome
and the unanimous consent of her Fathers. Rome enjoins on
her children an implicit faith, which believes on authority with-
OTiit evidence. The faith of tlie Protestant is an intelligent con-
viction, the result of the fiee and manly exercise of the faculties

74 POPISH LITERATURE. AND EDUCATION.

God gave him, guided by divine fear and help. Tlie papist collects
tlie dicta of Fathers and Councils, onlv to we'drthem as shackles
on his understanding. The Protestant Inings all dkia to the test
of reason, and still more, of that 'Word, to ^\hich his reason has
spontaneously bowed as the supreme and infallible truth. Eome
bids US listen to her authority and blindly submit; Protestant-
ism commands : " Prove all things ; hold fast to that which is
good." Happily, the prohibition of private judgment is as im-
possible to be obeyed as it is alisurd. In the very act of com-
manding us not to think for ourselves, Eome invokes oiu' thought
io comprehend the proofs of her command. In the very breath
with which she tells us not to reason, she calls upon reason to
understand the justice of the prohibition. In truth, the exercise
of private judgment is the exercise of thought ; for if the mind
is to think at all, it must be its o^ti free thoughts which it pro-
duces. If I ^ee at aU, it must be A^ith my own eyes, and in such
shapes and colors as they of themselves reveal to me. To com-
mand me to see only with the eyes of another, is to make me
bhnd. And so, the attempt to banish private judgment from re-
ligion is an attempt to make man cease to think, or, in other
words, to reduce him on that subject below the level of a ra-
iional being. If it were successful, man would no longer be a
religious being, but a clever brute. And this is, indeed, the very
ideal of that result in which Eome would most delight ; to make
men a docile herd of human beasts, incapable of insubordina-
tion, yet apt and skilful above other animals to toil for the pam-
X)ering of her lordly luxury and pride. Nor is this mental bond-
age limited to sacred learning ; it is also inculcated in secular
studies, lest perchance the habit and spirit of free thought formed
in the domain of human science should invade that of theology.
The confines of every realm of thought are overspread with
darkness, lest some sidedight should gleam upon the foul delu-
sions of her spiritual tyranny, reveahng them to her victims.
By how many odious restrictions, censorships, inquisitions and
tortures is this despotism over thought sustained ! How many
prisons, racks and faggots have been employed to crush the fi'ee-
dom of the mind !

To Eome belongs the diabolical preeminence above all pagan
priesthoods and political despots, of punishing with the tiirest

POPISH LITERATURE AND EDUCATION. 75

death which the human frame can endure, the crime of being
too wise and truthful to believe all her absurdities. The Index
of Prohibited Books, a stout volume composed of the mere titles
of the works she has proscribed, gives curious evidence of her
instinctive hatred of all human intelligence; for we find there,
not only all the great works of her assailants, as we would ex-
pect, but of nearly all the great masters who have extended the
domains of knowledge. Whether they wrote of Philosophy,
Geography, Histor}-, Poetry, Rome could not forgive them the
attempt to ennoble the minds which it was her purpose to en-
slave. When we read in the Index such names as these, which
a few minutes' search has collected : Bacon, Cudworth, Descartes,
Hume, Kant, Yillers, Malebranche, Leibnitz, Locke, Bentham,
Grotius, Bayle, Basnage, Burnet, Hallam, Mosheim, Brucker,
Robertson, Selden, Sismondi and Milton, does it not seem as
though Pome had designedly proclaimed herself the patroness
of ignorance, by arraying against herself all that is most glorious
in human intellect ? To repress the free activity of the mind in
religion is the most effectual mode to curb all expansive thought
in every department. The truths of religion are the most per-
vasive and stimulating of all others. Christianity sits as queen
and directress of all man's exertions, controlling every duty,
modifying every relation, influencing every interest of humanity,
ennobling and fructifying every speculation. The conscience is
the central power of the soul, so that he who is fettered there is
a slave in his whole being. When the conscience is chained,
there can be no free development of the faculties by bold and
manly exercise. The Keformation, says Guizot, was, in its men-
tal character, but the insurrection of the human mind against the
mental impression of Pome, which had weighed so heavily on
the irrepressible activity of thought as to provoke a resistless
reaction. How beneficent the impulse which every science and
every institution received from that great movement. Poman
Catholicism itself was aroused by the collision into a reaction, to
which is due nearly all the subsequent activity which has rescued
it from stagnating into barbarism. The attempt may be made
to refute these conclusions, by pointing to the many illustrious
men who, living and dying in the Pomish communion, have
helped to adorn every department of knowledge, human and di-

76 roriSH liteeature and education.

vine ; or, by boasting of a few great entrepots of science in the
old foundations of Popish Europe. "Was it not a son of the
Holy Mother Church," it may be asked, " who first taught us the
true theory of the stars? "Was it not a Papist who "gave to
Europe a new world ? Were they not Papists who exhumed
the Greek and Latin classics out of the dust of the middle ages,
and who have since produced the best editions of all the works
of Christian antiquity ? Did not Papists invent gunpowder, the
art of printing, the mariner's compass, the galvanic machine?
Yea, were not the very Reformers themselves, in whose pretended
light and learning Protestants so much glory, reared in the bosom
of Popery ? And did they not acquire in her schools the know-
ledge which they ungratefully turned against her ? How, then,
can that system be justly cha-rged as the mother of ignorance,
from beneath whose patronage have proceeded the most glorious
elements of human progress ?" This is our reply : " True, the
human mind, thanks to its benevolent Creator, has a native ac-
tivity Avhich despotism cannot crush, however it may curb it. It
may be that Rome has been so far aware of this as not to attempt
an impossibility— except once, when her judicial blindness pro-
voked the triumphant insurrection of the Eeformation. It may
be that she has permitted or encouraged certain forms of men-
tal activity, even to a high degree of cultivation, as a safe outlet
for the indomitable elasticity of man's spirit, selecting those
forms which were least important to his true welfare, in order
that she might be able to suppress the most precious and fruit-
ful exertions of the mind with sterner force. But these instances
of mental activity in her subjects have not been because of, but
in spite of her influences. But for the baleful paralysis of that
system, they would have been a hundred fold more ; and Papists
have usually made their happy exertions just in proportion to
the weakness of the hold which Eomanism had upon their real
spirit and modes of thought.

It is true, again, that the innate energies of some great soiils
among Papists have prompted them to attempt and accomplish
mental exploits of high emprise, but Rome has usually resisted
their exertions, and punished their success. Hoger Bacon, the
inventor of gunpowder, loas a Papist ; but tlie reward which his
church apportioned him for his chemical knowledge and spirit

POPISH LITERATUFiE AND EDUCATION. 77

of free enquiry was a long imprisonment in a monastery on the
charge of magic. J?euc/ilbi, another sou of Rome, introduced
to Europe the long lost treasures of the Hebrew literature.
This is true ; and his church so appreciated his labors as to
prompt the German Emperor to order the biu'ning of all the
Hebrew books in the realm, and the great scholar's pupils were
nearly all found in the next generation among the Protestant Re-
formers. Erasmus also was a nominal Papist, who published
the first critical edition of the Greek Kew Testament. But his
work provoked a general howl of contumely and curses from
the priests and monks of all Europe, some of whom charged him
with committing thereby the sin against the Holy Ghost. Col-
umbus did indeed " give to Castile and Leon a new world," but
his theory of geography was the mock of all the popish clergy
and doctors of Ferdinand's court, so that it was impossible for
him to secure patronage for his enterprise, till the womanly piety
of Isabella was moved in his behalf. Galileo also was a son of
Rome, that great man, v.'ho revolutionized astronomy and me-
chanics, who first made the telescope reveal the secrets of the
skies, and thus prepared the way for that Wondrous science
which, among its other beneficial results, has taught the mariner
to mark his beaten track across the pathless ocean, thus making
possible the gigantic commerce of our century. How did Rome
reward him ? She made him la:iguish in her Inquisition, till he
was bowed to the shame of denying the truth, of which the de-
monstration was his glor}-.

And this Index of Prohibited Books is found crowded with
the names, not only of heretics, but with a part of the works of
nearly all Rome's own sons, whose genius or learning has illumi-
nated her history ; a proof that their improvements were the
offspring of fruitful nature, borne in despite of the novercal envy
of Holy Mother Church. Upon the fact that so many of the
benefactors of human knowledge, including even the Reformers,
were reared under Rome, it may be said, so have the greatest
liberators been ever reared under despots. Harmodius and
Aristogeiton under Pisistratus, Brutus under Tarquin, the Mac-
cabees under Antiochus, Tell under Rudolph of Hapsbiirg,
Hampden, Pym and Cromwell under the Stuarts, and our o^^^^
Washincjton under George III. With as much reason mij^jht we

78 POPISH LITEEATURE AND EDUCATION.

argue lience, that despotism is the proper soil to nourish liberty,.
as infer from the instances of freedom of thought under Kome
that tliej^ were her proper gift to the human mind. And finally,
it is not a handful of particular cases which proves a general
law : " One swallow does not make a summer." When we in-
quire for the general influence of a system, we consider not the
few exceptions which exist under it, but the condition of the
masses.

"We trust this discussion has educed principles which, among
other valuable applications, will enable us to value at their pro-
per worth the merits of Koman Catholic education and scholar-
ship. Ever since the Reformation urged the human mind for-
ward on its great career of improvement, Rome has perceived
that Christendom will no longer endure the shackles of ignor-
ance, in which that tyrant church would be best pleased to bind
the mind, and that men will no longer permit the boon of know-
ledge to be plucked openly away. Hence she has adopted the-
policy of countermining the intelligence which she fears, by be-
coming the patroness of a pseudo-education. And she has
committed the managemei t of this policy especially to the order
of Jesus, the most slavish and most thoroughly popish of all
papal societies. Hence the eager activity of this order in the
establishment of colleges, especially to catch the children of
Protestants ; hence the boasts of superior scholarship, which
have deceived many unthinking and ill-informed men. The
treachery of all their pretended zeal for letters is betrayed by
this question even ; why does it exhaust its efforts on provid-
ing for the education of our sons, and the sons of other similar
Protestant states, Avho least need their help, while the benighted,
masses of Ireland, Spain, Italy, the Danube are left unen-
lightened? Why expend their exclusive exertions to educate
heretics, while so many of the sons of their own church sit in.
Boeotian night? We suspect this over-generous zeal; we fear
lest this education which they offer be the gift of another Tro-
jan horse.

Our good, unsuspicious Protestants have especially been
gulled by pretensions of peculiar classical and linguistic accom-
plishments. It is claimed that their Latinity, for instance, is to
the best attainments of Protestant schools as Hyperion to a.

POPISH LITERATURE AND EDUCATION. 79'

Satyr. "Their pupils do not merely stumble tlirougli a slow
translation of a Latin sentence : they can talk Latin. So thor-
ough is their learning that the higher elasses actually receive
lectures in philosophy in that learned tongue." But look
beneath the surface. That fluency is but the recitation of a
parrot, accompanied with no thorough apprehension of gram-
matical principles, and leading to no awakening of thought.
These Latin lectiu'es on philosophy are but the slow mechanical
dictation of some miserable syllabus of the contracted anti-
quated bare-bones of scholastic pedantry. It does not suit the
purpose of Rome or Jesuits to do that which is the true work
of mental training, to teach the mind to think for itself. That
habit, so deadly to the base pretensions of the hoary deceiver,
once learned in the walks of secular literature, would bo too
probably carried into the domains of theology. Hence, the
Jesuits' policy is, to form in secular learning the desired mental
temper of servile docility, inordinate respect for authority and
impotence of independent thought, so that even mechanic:^,,
optics, chemistry, must be taught by the memorizing of dicta ^
not by the exercising of the understanding in their investiga-
tions. Then, if to this servile temper there can be added any
accomplishments, by which the bondage of the mind can be
concealed and a false eclat thrown upon the church, they think
it is very well. The policy of Rome in her education is that of
the lordly Roman slave-owner towards his bondsmen. To pro-
mote the amusement, the interest, or the pomp of their lords,
slaves were trained to be masterly musicians, scribes, rhetori-
cians, and even poets and philosophers; but still they must
exert their attainments only for their masters. And so would
Rome lay hold on our children, the sons of freemen, of free
America, and make them only accomplished slaves. But above
all, does their system sap the very foundations of virtue and
nobleness. It substitutes an indolent and weak dependence on
authority for honest conviction, and policy for rectitude. It
poisons the health of the moral being. He who is spiritually
enslaved is wholly a slave, every noble faculty is benumbed by
the incubus of spiritual tyranny, and the soul lies prone in.
degradation.

SIMPLICITY OF PULPIT STYLE.^

PERMIT me, dear bretliren, to offer you my liearty con-
gratulations upon tliis re-nniou of onr Society, and tlie
enjoyment of anotlier 3'ear of mercies and of liappy labors. A
member of any of tlie successive classes which have issued
hence, in an assemblage gathered from all those classes, meets
some to whom he is a stranger in person, though a child of the
same Alma Hater. But there is no distance between our aims
and our hearts. AVliile we meet our own fellow-students with
peculiar delight, we meet all as fellow-laborers. I need not
suggest how much the enjoyment of each of us would be en-
hanced, could we gather around us all who studied and prayed
with us here ; for, doubtless, the busy thought of each one has
already surrounded him with the familiar band. Probably such
a meeting would be as impossible for all of us as it would be for
me., Some of those whom I here learned to love I can see at
no anniversary, till we meet in the general assembly and church of
the first-born in Jerusalem, the mother of us all. "W'hat stronger
evidence of the noble and holy influence of these annual gath-
erings than that fact, of which, I doubt not, every heart has
already been conscious, that they do not fail to carry our
thoughts upward to that glorious re-union? Let it be our aim
to make this momentary resting point in our warfare as like as
possible to that eternal rest.

But we are reminded that we have not yet entered into that
rest. To-morrow we return again to the struggle. And, there-
fore, the appropriate mode of observing this season will be to
make it such as God has made those Sabbaths which are his
type of the eternal rest, a season for sharpening our weapons
and girding our loins afresh for the contest.

I have thought anxiously in what way I could best contribute

' An address to the Society of Alumni of Union Theological Seminary, Vir-
ginia. Delivered at the Annual Meeting, June, 1853.

80

SIMPLICITY OF PULPIT STYLE. 81

to this purpose. And it lias seemed that, poiliaps, as appro-
priate a topic as any wliose discussion the times demand, would
be SIMPLICITY AND DIKECTNESS OP PULPIT STYLE.

Many share with me the conviction that the renewed discus-
sion of this topic is needful. Unless I am greatly deceived, a
comparison of much that is now heard from educated clergy-
men with the pure standards of classic English will prove that
the vice is far gone. Our ears have become viciously accus-
tomed to a degree of wordiness, complexity, and ornament,
which would have been called bombast by Addison, Swift, or
Pope. Even Dr. Samuel Johnson, the proverb of his day for
his love of the os rotundum, seems simple and natural beside us.
But let us compare ourselves with the great ancient masters of
style, as to the length and structure of sentences, the employ-
ment of useless epithet, and the mode of using figurative or-
nament. Let us compare ourselves, for example, with Horace,
as distinguished for the sparkling beauty of his language as
for the hatefulness of his morals, and we shall comprehend
something of the excess of our fault.

The profusion of reading matter among us,- and the careless
speed with which men write and read, must naturally tend to
the same vice. Perhaps, after all the rules for style that may
be laid down, the real source of transparency and beauty is the
p)ossession of the sterling ore of thought and feeling. He who
has the most numerous, just, and weighty ideas, in most natural
order, and whose own soul is most fully possessed and pene-
trated with them, usually has the finest style. It is only when
the sentiment so fills and fires the soul of the speaker that he
looks wholly at the thoiight, and not at all at the words in which
it clothes itself, that the perfection of eloquence is approached.
Hence, as the art of writing much with small materials is ex-
tended, wordiness and complexity must increase. The hurried
and shallow author continually strives to outdo his rivals and
his own previous exploits, by tricking out his productions more
and more with these ornaments which are so much cheaper
than great or sparkling thoughts.

History shows also, that an artificial and luxurious mode of
living surely affects the literary taste of a nation. The simplic-
ity of thought is banished. The manliness of soul whicli pro-

VoL. III.— 6.

O/J SniPLICITY OF PULPIT STYLE.

ceeds from labor, struggles witli diificulty and intercourse ■witli
nature, becomes rare. The mawkisli mind of such a peoj)le
demands the same tawdry profusion and frippery in literature
"odiich it loves in its bodily enjoyments. We know how the
manly eloquence of republican Eome faded away, as the people
were corrupted by luxury, into the feeble bombast of the Byzan-
tine literature. If the rapid increase of luxury can give any
gi'ound for expecting a similar result now, that ground surely
exists among us.

Hence, the impression has grown strong with me, that we
need to be recalled to what would seem, to our exaggerated taste,
a severe simplicity. When one so young as myself, and so lit-
tle entitled by his own skill to teach on this subject, offers
his humble contribution towards this refomu, he should do it
with great modesty. And you will please receive what I shall
offer, not as dogmatical, but suggestive. I do not dictate any-
thing to you, but only offer, as subjects of your more thorough
and wise reflection, those ideas jy which I have attempted the
repression of my own faidts.

Permit me also to say, at the outset, that when I advocate a
severe simplicity, I am waging no war against rhetoric. I am
not presuming to impugn that argument, by which I know I
should be met, that since it is our duty to do our utmost for the
salvation of souls, that Christian minister is faulty who does
not avail himself of exexj innocent aid or ornament by Avhich
the truth can be commended. I only question whether any-
thing which violates a natural simplicity and directness of speech
is ornament, and has any efficacy in commending truth. Let
rhetoric be truly defined as "the art of persuasion," the ari of
so addressing the human understanding, conscience and affec-
tions, as best to enforce our views, and I heartily shake hands
with it. I will say, let us have as much true rhetoric as possi-
ble. My objection to all meretricious aid is, that it is not or-
nament, but deformity.

Indeed, throughout this discussion, it is on the principles of
a sound rhetoric itself that I would ground all the considera-
tions to enforce simplicity. The truest ari is that which is most
natural. Tlie finest statue is that on which the strokes of the
chisel are unseen, and the marble is most hke native flesh.

SIMPLICITY OF PULPIT STYLE. 83

Tlie finest paiuting is that in which the behokler is not for a
moment reminded of the cunning union of lights and shades,
but seems to see the hving and breathing man, standing forth
from the canvas. And so, considering our profession of pubhc
speaking as an art merely, he is most perfect in the art in ^hom
the hearer perceives no art, but seems to hear nature pouring
forth her voice in her own spontaneous simplicity. I have seen
somewhere an incident which well illustrates this proposition.
A simple countryman Avas taken by his friends in London to see
Garrick act in Hamlet. He seemed to be intensely interested in.
the performance. But at his return, when his fi'iends examined
the effect of the scene upon his mind, they were astonished to
find him perfectly silent concerning the great tragedian. He
seemed to have made no impression on him, while he was loud
in his praise of all the subordinate actors. "\\'hen they asked di-
rectly, what he thought of Hamlet, they learned the explanation.
" Oh ! " he answered, " as to the man whose father had been so
basely murdered, it was nothing strange that he should feel and
act as he did. Xo son could help it. But as to those other
people, who were ouh' making believe, their imitations were
wonderful." So true to nature, and so unaffected had been
Ganick's manner, that the countryman had utterly overlooked
the fact that Garrick was acting! But this was he whom the
cultivated taste of Britain decided to be the prince of theatrical
eloquence. One of the most just objections, therefore, which
can be urged against artificial ornament is, that it is a sin.
against art. Much that is now heard from the pulpit with ad-
miration would be as explicitly condemned by rhetoric, by
Hamlet's instructions to the players, or by Horace's Epistle to
the Pisos, as by Christian feeling and principle.

But let us introduce the more direct discussion by reminding
you of the topics and aims of our public addresses. Our sub-
ject is the most august that can fill and fire the human soul —
the perfect holiiiess of the divine law, redemption from eternal
ruin, and the winning of eternal happiness. Our aim is to per-
suade men to embrace this redemption for the salvation of their
souls. It is an established nile that the grandest subjects should
be treated with most sparing ornament. The greatness of the
topic commends itself sufficiently without such aids. Labored

84 SniPLICITY OP PULPIT STYLE.

attempts to give it adventitious force seem to be a confession
tliat tlie subject does not itself possess T\eiglit enough to com-
mand tlie heart. Ornaments which might be graceful and ap-
propriate when connected with a hghter topic, would seem mere-
tricious, when applied to a grand one. "W'e do not sun'ound the
majestic temple with the same tracery which would be in place
upon the graceful pavilion.

Again, we ol)serve that man's nature is such that all powerful
operations of the soul are simple and one. Complexity of the
affections enfeebles all. Multiplicity of figure distracts the at-
tention, and by distracting, weakens. It is the single, mighty,
rushing wind, which raises the billows of the great deep, while
a variety of cross-breezes only roughen its surface with trifling
ripples. A moment's thought will show us that a multiplication
of ornaments or epithets must disappoint its own object. The
minds of men cannot attend effectually to a large number of im-
pressions in rapid succession. Although thought is rapid, yet a
certain lapse of time is necessary to allow the mind to receive
and become possessed with the idea presented to it. Hence,
he who listens to the verbose speaker, is compelled to allow
many of the words which fall upon his ear to jiass through his
mind without impression. The mind of the listener cannot fully
weigh and feel each phrase addressed to it in so rapid and com-
plex a stream, and, consequently, it suffers them all to pass
through it lightly. It cannot do otherwise, though there was,
at the outset, a sincere effort of attention. Every writer or
speaker, therefore, who indulges himself in heaping up useless
epithets, or in the multiplication of adjectives not distinct and
strongly descriptive, or in any other luxuriance of language,
should remember that he is himself compelling his reader or
hearer to practice the habit of Hstless attention. And then
there is an end of all vigorous impression. The speaker can no
longer hope to infuse a strong sentiment into the soul of his au-
dience. Hence the maxim so strongly enforced by Campbell,
that " the fewer the words are, provided neither perspicuity nor
propriety be Adolated, the expression is always the more vivid."
To admit into our discourse any word, phrase, or figure, which
has not its essential use as a vehicle of our idea, is a sacrifice of
effect. The effort which the mind of the hearer is called to make

SIMPLICITY OF PULPIT STYLE. 85

towards these unessential plirases, in the acts of sensation and
perception, is just so much taken from the force with which it
receives the main idea. The highest species of eloquence is
that which is suggestive, where clear and ^'igorous phrases not
only convey to the hearer's mind distinct ideas, but point it to
tracts of light which lead it along to higher conceptions of its
o\\Ti. But such phrases must be brief. Our language should,
therefore, be pruned, till every word is an essential part of the
clearly defined idea, which the sentence holds up, like a strong
picture, to the mind of the hearer. 11 we wish to strike a blow
which shall be felt, we will not take up a bough laden vnth foli-
age. ^\'e will use a naked club.

I suspect that the correctness of these views is confessed, even
by the consciousness of persons of the most perverted taste.
However they may laud their literary idol, they cannot conceal
it from themselves, that their listlessness grows more and more
dreary under the most brilliant sparklings of his rhetorical fire-
works ; that the more his sparks are multiplied, the more feebly
they strike. There is, indeed, a large class of Hsteners, whose
minds are so utterly shallow, and who are so thoroughly uncon-
scious of the real nature and aims of eloquence, that they are
pleased with the mere lingual and grammatical dexterity with
which surprising strings of fine words are rolled forth. Their
idea of fine speaking seems to be that it is a sort of vocal leger-
demain, Hke that of the juggler, who can twirl a plate on the end.
of a rattan as no one else can, an art in which the perfection of
skill consists in connecting the largest quantity of a certain style
of words with the greatest fluency, so that they shall have the
semblance of meaning and melody. "With minds so childish, of
course, he who can carry this verbiage to the greatest length
will be the greatest orator. But none here, surely, are caj)able
of so base an ambition as to desire this low and ignorant ap-
plause.

There are still stronger considerations, drawn from the natui'e
of the preacher's subject, and of his purpose, in addressing his
fellow men. All must admit that appropriateness is the very
first element of good taste in every art. It is needless to argue
this. Kow, if we consider what the preacher of the gospel pro-
fesses to be, and what is the topic on which he addresses his

86 SIMPLICITY OF PULPIT STYLE.

fellow men, 'we shall feel hovr utterly inappropriate every artifi-
cial ornament is. Every minister professes to be actuated by the
love of souls, and by a strong sense of their danger without the
gospel. He professes to be a man who is speaking, not to amuse,
nor to gain money, nor to display his talent, but to do good.
Even if he is so lost to tho feelings proper to his high ojffice as
to harbor these ignoble motives, as a mere matter of taste he
must conceal them ; for their display in connection with a sub-
ject so awful cannot but be loathsome to all hearers. His mo-
tive, then, must be benevolent sympathy and love to the Saviour.
And his subject combines all that should awe the mind into sin-
cerity, all that should unseal the fountains of tenderness and all
that should fire the soul with warm and ennobling emotions.
His themes are the attributes of an infinite and jealous God and
his perfect law ; that fatal lapse which " brought death into the
world and all our woe ; " the immortal soid, with its destiny of
endless bhss or pain ; the tomb, the resurrection trump, the
righteous Judge, the glories of heaven and the gloom of hell,
the gospel's cheering sound, the tears of Gethsemane, the blood
of Calvary, and the sweet and awful breathings of the Holy
Ghost. His mission is to lay hold of his fellow men, as they
hang over the pit, and draw them from perdition by the love of
the Kedeemer. How unspeakably inappropriate is every arti-
fice here which glances at self-laudation ! And how utterly un-
natural is all complexity of figure ! If ever man should earnestly
feel, he who presents these themes, fi'om the motives which the
preacher professes, should be instinct with earnestness. But
who is there that does not know that the eloquence of native
emotion is always simple? When the wail of the bereaved
mother rises from the bedside of her dying child, ah ! there is no
art there ! "We have heard it, my brethren, and we know that
our art cannot equal the power of its simplicity. When the story
of his -VNTongs bursts from the heart of the indignant patriot, and
he consecrates himself upon the altar of his country, it is in
simple words. "When the almost despairing soul raises to the
Saviour the cry, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner," he speaks
unaifectedly. So should the preacher speak. Let me urge it,
then, with all the emphasis which language can convey, that the
■very first dictates of good taste and propriety, for him who

SIMPLICITY OF PULPIT STYLE. 87

speaks of the gospel, are iiiiaffectedness and directness of style.
To tiirn away tlie mind's eye for one moment from these over-
powering realities, towards the mere accessories of rhetoric, is
the most heinons sin against rhetoric. It is as though the man
who desired to ronse his sleeping neighbor from a burning
louse should bethink himself of the melody of his tones, while
he cries fire. It is as though the champion, fighting for his
hearth-stone and his household, should w^aste his thoughts on
the grace of his attitudes and the beauty of his limbs.

Do I advocate, then, a directness and simplicity so bald as to
exclude every figure ? By no means. A certain class of figures
is the very language of nature. Such we should use in their
proper place. They are those figures which, every one sees, are
used to set forth the subject and not the speaker. They are
those figures which the mind spontaneously seizes when en-
larged and strengthened by the earnestness of its emotions, and
welds, by the heat of its action, into the very substance of its
topic. Such ornaments are distinguished at a glance from the
epithets, tropes and similes which the artificial mind gathers up,
wdth an eye turned all the time upon the meed of praise it is to
receive. Wiiliiu the strict bounds of this directness ard sim-
plicity there is ample scope for the exercise of genius and ima-
gination. Indeed, it is when a vigorous logic, and a truly origi-
nal imagination, are stimulated by the most intense heat of emo-
tion, that the most absolute simplicity of language, and, at the
same time, the grandest heights of eloquence,, are reached.

There is no stronger conviction with me than that the preacher
should never attempt to rescue his discourse from baldness or
tameness by those supposed rhetorical ornaments wdiich are
collected with deliberate design. The moment an ornament is
felt to be introduced " with malice prepense," it becomes a de-
formity. It is always a futile and degrading resort. There is a
rule of architecture propounded for some styles by the greatest
masters which speakers might profitably adopt. It is, that
while every essential member of the structure shall be so pro-
portioned as to be an ornament, no ornament shall be admitted
which is not also an element of construction ; no column which
has nothing to support ; no bracket which has nothing to
.strengthen. Next to the possession of native genius, the proper

88 SIMPLICITY OF PULPIT STYLE.

sources of literary ornament are in tlie warmth of an "honest, ear-
nest emotion, cooperating with a clear and logical comprehension
of the thing discussed. Unless our ornaments come spontane-
ously from this, their proper mint, the}^ will inevitably be coun-
terfeit. When, therefore, the preacher, after he has done all in
the preparation of his sul)ject which clear definition, just ar-
rangement, and sound logic can effect, feels that his work is still
too tame to take hold on the people, it is worse than useless for
him to seek, in cold blood, for ornament. He should seek feel-
ing. He needs to sacrifice, not at the shrine of Calliope, but at
the altar of the Holy Ghost,

Let us remember that all men have a native perception of con-
sistency and appropriateness. And all men instinctively judge
whether the tones, countenance and language of the person
speaking to them are spontaneous or artificial. The cultivated
do not surpass the ignorant and the young in the strength of
these perceptions, for they are the direct result of intuitive ca-
pacities, which are often perverted by the habits of a faulty cul-
tivation. Not even does dramatic eloquence offer any exception
to the statement that all artificial speaking is inevitably felt by
all hearers to be artificial, and therefore naught. For I am sure
that there never has been, and never will be a good actor, whether
on the stage, at the bar, or in the forum, who did not become
eloquent by so palpably conceiving the emotions proper to the
part he was acting as to merge his personality for the time in
the part, and to become sincerely inspired with its feelings. Let
us, then, remember that the prompt and spontaneous perception
of every hearer decides absolutely whether our manner seems to
him artificial or hearty ; and if it decides us to be artificial, it
has forthwith, with equal certainty, the feeling of our inconsist-
ency. But what is worse than this, the chief motive which the
world will naturally impute to us for this insincerity of manner
is the desire of self-display. We may plead that if there is an
error of manner, it has arisen from a well-meaning mistake in
our disinterested effort to impress the truth. The world will not
be so charitable as to credit us. It will say that the natural
language of disinterestedness is simplicity, and that the natural
language of self-display is artifice ; and it will persist in imput-
ing the latter as our motive.

SIMPLICITY OF PULPIT STYLE. 89

It is very important to observe here also, that if, from our per-
verted traiuiug, an artificial manner has become second nature
to us, this Avill not prevent the mischief. To the instinctive per-
ceptions of the hearer it still seems artificial, and he naturally
concludes it is purposely such. It is not sufficient, therefore,
for the speaker to say that it is " his manner," — that to him it is
not artificial ; that in speaking thus he is giving free course ta
his dispositions. He should inquire how it became his man-
ner, whether through the promptings of an ingenuous, humble,
and self-devoting love for souls, or through the itchings of con-
ceit, literary vanity, and servile imitation, in the days of his in-
experience.

But where the native perceptions of the hearers receive from
our manner this impression of artifice, what reason is so dull as
not to draw the inference that the preacher, if he really believed
what he proclaimed of the sinner's risk, and if he really felt that
generous compassion which is his ostensible motive, could have
neither time nor heart to bestow one thought on self-display?
AVhen men listen to one who preaches of their dread ruin and
its sacred remedy with deliberate and intentional artifice, they
are driven to one of two alternatives. They must conclude,
" either this man does not believe his own words, when he tells
nie of my hanging over eternal fires, and of heaven stooping to
my rescue ; or, if he does believe them, he must have almost
the heart of a fiend to be capable of vanity and selfish artifice
in the presence of truths so sacred and dire." And, indeed, my
brethren, what must be the callous selfishness of that man who,
believing in the reality of the gospel themes, can desecrate them
to the tricking forth of his own rhetorical fame !

Grecian story tells us that when the painter Parrhasius was
engaged upon a great picture, representing Prometheus as he
lay chained to the crags of Mount Caucasus, and eternally con-
sumed by a ravenous vulture, he bought an old man from among
the Olynthian captives, sold by Philip of Macedon, and tortured
him to death beside hie easel, iu order that he might transfer to
his canvas the traits of the last struggles in their native reality.
Does not the heart grow sick at the devilish ambition of this
pagan, as he steels his soul against the cry of agony, and cooily
wrings out the life of a helpless and harmless fellow man to win

90 SIMPLICITY OF rULPIT STYLE.

fame for himself, by tlirowing into his master-piece the linea-
ments of a living death?

But, is this instance strong enough to express the crnel and
impious vanity of that man who can deliberately traffic in the
terrors of eternity, and the glories of God, merely to deck his
own oratory ? He brings the everlasting woes of his brother
man, and gathers the gloom and the groans of their perdition,
and coolly dips his pencil in the blackness of their despair, to
make of them materials for self-disi^lay ! Nay, he even dares to
lay his hand upon the awfid glories of the cross, and those sa-
cred pangs of Calvary, at which redeemed sinners should only
shudder and weep, and weaves tlie^n into a garland for his own
vanity. Kow, the impenitent man can hardly believe that the
minister who shows in all his social life the sympathies and
vii'tues of an amiable character is thus savagely and profanely
selfish. And, therefore, the alternative which he must embrace
is, to believe, or, if he does not consciously believe, to do what
is practically more ruinous, to feel half consciously, that the
minister is not in earnest ; that his preaching is not really
prompted by a settled belief of the sinner's ruin and the Re-
deemer's love, but by the desire to further his own reputation
and earn his own bread. For, is not this parade of self-display
just in character with such a purpose ? And when the lover of
sin and godlessness thus feels that the appointed ambassador of
eternity does not himself believe, of course he will allow him-
self to doubt. Let this, then, be the great and final objection
to all artifice of manner in the pulpit, that it most surely sows
Taroadcast the seeds of skepticism.

And, in truth, dear brethren, does not our proneness to such
manner, does not the fact that we can be capable of it, pro-
ceed from the weakness of oiu' faith ? The true cure of the vice
is to feel the powers of the world to come. The reason that
Davies, Tennent and T\'hitefield, Paul and Peter, and above all.
He that spoke as never man spake, displayed such directness
and power, was that their souls saw heaven and hell with the
vision of faith. The more we can feel the love of Christ, and
the nearer we can draw to the cross, the judgment, and the
eternal world, the more we shall feel that aU else than native
simphcity and directness is out of place, and that all else is un-
necessary.

GEOLOGY AND THE BIBLE.

THE subject to whichwe invoke our readers' attention has been
mucli debated. But our jjurpose is not to weary tliem with a
repetition of those discussions concerning a pre-Adamite eai-th,
the length of the creative days, or the best way to reconcile geo-
logy with Moses, which have often been conducted within a few
years past, with deficient knowledge and temper in some cases,
and often with slight utilit}'. In the progress of natural science,
relations between it and theology become apparent from time to
time, and fi-equently in very unexpected ways. Both parties are
usually at fault in defining those relations in the beginning ; and
thus there occurs a season of somewhat confused contest, arising
from the oversight of the proper "metes and bounds" of the
two sciences. As the discussion proceeds, the facts are at length
set forth, which enable all reasonable men to adjust the relations
satisfactorily, and to appropriate to each its legitimate field of
authority. All will agree that it is time such an adjustment were,
if possible, begun between the geologist and the divine. Our
humble attemj)t will be to make such a beginning. We have no
geologic theory to advance or to impugn, and no particular facts
to advance, either new or old. But, looking back over the gen-
eral course of the discussion on the structure of our globe, only
as those may profess to do who keep up with general literature,
without assuming to be professional geologists, we would
endeavor to fix some princij^les of discussion by which the
apphcation of natural science and its inferences may be de-
fined and Hmited to their proper territory, and the claims of
theology established along the points of contact. It would, per-
Jiaps, have been better for the divines if they had confined their
efforts to these defensive views, instead of entering, without being
always adequately prepared, into the technical discussions of
g;eology.

' Appeared in. the Soutfier/i Presbyterian Review, for July, 1S61,

91

92 GEOLOGY AXD THE BIBLE.

1. But, wliile making this admission at the outset, we "U'onld
firmly protest against the aiTogant and offensive spirit in "v^hich
geologists Lave often, "sve may almost say -usually, met clerical
criticisms of their reasonings. To the objections advanced by^
theologians, the answer has usually been a contemptuous asser-
tion that they were incompetent to sit in judgment, or to object,
when geology was in question, because they were not profes-
sional masters of the science. Their reasonings have been pro-
nounced foolish, ignorant, mistaken, and slightingly dismissed
or rejected without fair examination, because they came fi'om
" parsons." Now, we freely grant that it is a very naughty thing
for a parson, or a geologist, to profess to know what he does not
know, as well as a very foolish; that some of the "genus irrita-
hile vatuTii" have doubtless been betrayed into this folly by their
zeal against infidel science, as they supposed it, and that geo-
logists have not been at all behind them — as some instances will
show^ before we have done — in the mortifying displays of igno-
rance and sophistry they have made, in their attempts to use
the weapons of the theologian and expositor. But, we would
remark, while the specialties on which inductions are founded,
in any pai-ticular branch of natiu^al science, are, of course, better
known to the professor of the specialty, the man of general in-
telligence may jndge the deductions made from the general facts
just as well as the other. Any inductive logic is the same in
principle with all other inductive logic, and all deductive logic
also is similar. Tea, conclusions from facts may sometimes be
drawn more correctly by the man of general science than by the
plodding collector of them ; because the former applies to them
the appropriate logic with a more correct and expansive vievr,
and, j)erhaps, with less of the prejudice of hypothesis. The
man who defined the inductive logic was not a naturalist by
special profession — was not practically skilled in any one de-
partment of natural history — but was a great philosopher and
logician.

If, then, after geologists have described and generalized their
facts, and have explained their conclusions therefrom, a class so
well educated as the clergy must be pronounced unfitted to form
an opinion upon them, the fault must be in the geologist or his
science. If demonstration is there, it ought sui'ely to be visible

GEOLOGY AND THE BIBLE. 93

to the iutelligent eve. How absurd is it for tlie advocates of tlie
science to recalcitrate against the opinions of an educated chiss
of men, when they yirtually offer their systems to the comprehen-
sion of hoys, by making them a subject of collegiate instnictiou,
and one who has, perhaps, more scornfully than any other, de-
rided the criticisms of clerical opponents to popular assemblages
of clerks and mechanics! Surely, if Mr. Hugh Miller thought
that he could convince a crowd of London mechanics intelli-
gently, in one night's lecture, of his theory of the seven geologic
ages, it is absurd to claim that the science is too recondite for
the unholy inspection of a parson's eyes.

There must always be a peculiar reason for the meddling of
theologians in this subject. It is, that it is ^'irtually a theory of
cosmogony; and cosmogony is intimately connected with the
doctrine of creation, which is one of the modes by which God
reveals himself to man, and one of the prime articles of every
theology. The inevitable connection of the tAvo might be inferred
from this fact, that all the cosmogonies of the ancients were nat-
ural theologies ; there is no philosopher of whom we know any-
thing, among the Greeks and Eomans, who has treated the one
without treating the other. It must, therefore, be always ex-
pected that theologians will claim an interest in geoloei;ic specu-
lations, and will require them to be conformed to sound princi-
ples of logic and exposition.

2. On the other hand, the attitude and temper of many of the
eager defenders of inspiration towards the new science have
been most unwise. By many, a jealousy and uneasiness have
been disjDlaycd which were really derogatory to the dignity of
our cause. The Bible is so firmly established uj)on its impreg-
nable evidences, it has passed safely through so many assaults,
has v^dtnessed the saucy advance of so many pretended demon-
strations of its errors, which were afterwards covered with ridi-
cule by the learned, that its friends can well afford to be calm,
patient, and dignified. They should be neither too eager to
repel and denounce, nor too ready to recede from established
expositions of the text at the supposed demand of scientific dis-
coveries. They should assume the calm assui'ance, which re-
gards all true science, and every gentiine discovery, as destined
inevitably to become the handmaids, instead of the assailants,

94 GEOLOGY AND THE BIBLE.

of revelation. Especially to be deprecated is that shallow and
fickle policy, -which has been so often seen among the professed
defenders of the Bible, in hastily adopting some newlj-coined
exposition of its word, made to suit some supposed exigency of
a new scientific discovery, and as hastily abandoning it for some
still newer meaning. They have not even waited to ascertain
whether the supposed necessity for rehnquishing the old exjDO-
sition has been really created by a well-ertablished discovery ;
but, as prurient and shallow in science as in theology, they have
adopted on haK-evidence some new-fangled hypothesis of sci-
entific facts, and then invented, on groimds equally insecure,
some new-fangled explanations to twist God's word into seem-
ing agreement with the hypothesis. It would be well for us to
ascertain whether our position is really stormed before we re-
treat to search for another. But, several times within a genera-
tion, the world has seen a certain class of theologians saying
that the old popiilar understanding of the Bible upon a given
subject must be relinquished ; that science had proved it un-
tenable, but that they had at last found the ti'uo and undoubted
one. And this they j^roceeded to sustain with marvellous inge-
nuity and zeal. But, after a few years, the natiu'al philosophers
rehnquish, of their own accord, the hypothesis which had put
these expositors to so much trouble, and introduce with great
confidence a different one. And now, the divines tell us, they
were mistaken a second time as to what the Bible intended to
teach about it ; but they are certain they have it right at last.
So a third exposition is advanced. It has been this short-
sighted folly, more than any real collision between the Bible
and science, which has caused thinking men to doubt the au-
thority of inspiration, and to despise its professed exjjounders
If they are to be believed, then the word of God is but a soi-t
of clay which may be moulded into any shape required by the
purposes of priestcraft. Clergymen ought to know enough of
the history of human knowledge to be aware that true science
advances slowly and cautiously ; that great and revolutionizing
discoveries in physical laws are not estabhshed every day ; that
a multitude of hypotheses have been mistaken, before our times,
for demonstrations, and afterwards relinquished ; and that even
true inductions are always, to a certain extent, tentative, and

GEOLOGY AND THE BIBLE. 95

require to be partially corrected after the scienee has Ijeen
pushed to farther advances, from which fuller light is reflected
back upon them. It will be time enough, therefore, for us, as
professional expositors oi the Mosaic history, to settle and
proclaim a plan for expounding it in harmony with geology
when geology has settled itself. Our wisdom would be to
commit the credit and authority of God's Word to no the-
ory except such as is absolutely established by the laws
of sound exegesis; and when we have thus taken a well-con-
sidered position, to maintain it firmly against all mere appear-
ances.

3. It should, in the third place, be clearly decided what is
the degree of authority which we are to claim for the Bible
upon those questions of physics which lie along the path of its
topics. Many claim for geology a license here, which comes
very near to the deceitful distinction of the schoolmen, between
the philosophical and theological truth. When their daring
speculations clearly contravened the teachings of Scripture,
they said that theco opinions were true in philosophy, though
false in theology. In a somewhat similar spirit it is now
pleaded for geology, that it has its domain in a different field
of investigation and evidence from that of the Bible. Each
kind of evidence is valid in its own sphere, it is said; and,
therefore, the teachings of each science are to be held true,
independently of each other. But all truths are harmonious
inter se. If one proposition contradicts another, no matter from
what field of human knowledge it may be brought, manifestly,
both cannot be true. If, then, the Bible, properly understood,
affirms what geology denies, the difference is irreconcilable ; it
cannot be evaded by any easy expedient like that described
above ; it can only be composed by the overthrow of the au-
thority of one or the other of the parties.

To determine how the Bible should be understood in its allu-
sions to physical facts, we must bear in mind the object of God
in giving it. His purpose was not to teach us philosophical
knowledge, but theological. Nothing seems plainer than that
God acts on the scheme of leaving men to find out, by their own
researches, all those facts and laws of nature, the knowledge of
which may minister to curiosity or to material well-being ; while

96 GEOLOGY AND THE BIBLE.

he limits himself to giving us those divine facts and laws which
man's research could not discover, or could not adequately
estabhsh, necessary for our attaining our proper theological
end. Philosophy is our teacher for the body and for time ;
revelation, for the soul and for eternity. When revelation says
anything concerning material nature, it is only what is made
necessary to the comprehension of some theological fact or doc-
trine. And in its observance of this distinction the Bible is
eminently a practical book, saying nothing whatever for mere
curiosity, and stopping at just what is essential to religious
truth. Hence, v/e ought to understand that when the Scriptures
use popular language to describe physical occurrences or facts,
all they mean is to state the apparent phenomena as they would
seem to the popular eye to occur. They never intended to give
us the non-apparent, scientific mechanism of those facts or oc-
currences; for this is not essential to their practical object, and
is left to the philosopher. Hence, w^hen natural science comes,
and teaches us that the true ratioRale of apparent phenomena is
different from that which seems to be suggested by the terms of
the Scripture and of popular language, there is no real contra-
diction between science and the Bible, or between science and
the popular phraseology. For instance, the exposition of such
passages, which led the doctors of Salamanca to condemn
Columbus' geography as unscriptural, and the Inquisition and
Turretin to argue against the astronomy of Galileo, as infidel,
w^as mistaken. The former argued against Columbus, that the
Psalms speak of the heavens as spread out Hke a canopy, and
the earth as immovable and extended. Turretin argues most
methodically that the Copernican scheme of the heavens cannot
be true, because the Scriptures speak of the earth as " estab-
lished that it cannot be moved ; " of the sun as " going forth to
his circuit in the heavens ; " and of sun and moon as " setting,"
" rising," " standing still " at Joshua's command. We now clearly
see that all this was an exegetical folly. And, now that we
know it is the earth that moves, and not the sun, we no more
dream of charging the Bible with error of language than we do
the astronomer himself, wdien he says, perhaps on the very pages
of his almanac, "sunrises," " sun sets," " sun enters Capricorn,"
etc; for such really are the apparent motions of those bodies,

GEOLOGY AND THE BIBLE. 97

and had the Bible departed from the establis-lied popular phrase-
ology in mentioning them, to use terms of scientific accuracy, it
would have been gratuitous pedantry, aggravated by the fact that
it would have been unintelligible and absurd to all nations which
had not yet developed the Copernican astronomy.

Now, so far as the demands of modern geology upon our un-
derstanding of the Mosaic record are analogous to the conces-
sions made above, we cheerfully yield them. It was with a
view to the illustration of this new application that the familiar
principle was again stated by us. And we find this principle,
which we thus concede, claimed by the Christian geologist, as
Hugh Miller, to cover all possible liberties which they find it
convenient to take with the sacred text. This, then, is another
point which requires careful adjustment. When Moses seems
to say that God brought our world out of nothing into an or-
ganized state, about six thousand years ago, and in the space of
six days, are his words to be classed along with those passages
which denote physical occurrences according to their popular
appearance, and which are to be interpreted, as we do the popu-
lar language about them, in obedience to the discoveries of natu-
ral science ? Or, does this class of passages belong to a different
category ? We are compelled to take the latter answer as the
proper affirmative. In the first place, the reference to physical
facts in the record of creation is not merely subsidiary to the
narrative or statement of some theological truth, but it is iutro-
diiced for its own sake. For, creation is not only a physical
fact ; it is a theological doctrine. The statement of it is funda-
mental to the unfolding of the whole doctrine of the creature's
relation to his creator. It is not one of those things which re-
velation treats as being intrinsically outside its scope, and which
it, therefore, only introduces allusively. It is the first of those
"things of God," which it is the proper and direct object of re-
velation to teach authoritatively. Second : the fact of creation
had no apparent phase different from its true scientific one,
like the seeming dome of Ihe skies, the rising sun, the stable
earth ; for the simple reason that it h.id no human spectators.
Hence, there could be no popular mode of representation dif-
ferent from the true scientific rathnude, as there was no people
to observe the apparent phenomena and describe them. But

Vol. III.— 7.

vO GEOLOGY AND THE BIBLE.

we have seeu that the popular language of the Bible about the
rising sun, and such like apparent phenomena, receives its ex-
planation purely from the fact that it is conformed to the ap-
parent and obvious occurrences, and to the established popular
language founded thereon. Instead, therefore, of requiring
these passages to stand waiting until they receive their proper
construction fi'om the hand of natural science, they are to be
construed, like the remainder of the doctrinal teachings of the
Scriptures, according to their own independent laws of exegesis,
honestly applied.

Farther : when the proper rights of revelation, as related to
natural science, are defined, it is most important that we tissert
their independence of it. Most geologists speak as though, on
any subject which the researches of human science may happen
to touch, the Bible must say only what their deductions permit
it to say.^ The position to which they consign God's word is
that of a handmaid, dependent, for the vaHdity of the constmo-
tion to be put upon its words, upon their permission. Now
this, we boldly assert, is intrinsic rationalism ; it is the very
same principle of baptized infidelity which reappears from so
many different points of view, from Socinianism, Neologism,
Abolitionism, exalting the conclusions of the human understand-
ing over the sure word of prophecy. Let us fully concede that
the Bible has been often misinterpreted, and that thus its infalli-
bility has been cited to sustain what God never meant it to sus-
tain ; that its correct exposition may, especially in certain parts of
it, require great patience, caution, and modesty ; and that it is
wrong to claim its teachings as authoritative on any point, un-
less we have ascertained the true meaning of the text, beyond a
peradventure, by the just application of its own laws of exposi-
tion. But still, the Bible must be held to have its own ascer-
tainable and valid laws of exposition ; and its teachings, when
duly ascertained, must be absolutely iiuthoritative in all their
parts, without waiting on or deferring to any conclusions of hu-
man science whatsoever ; otherwise, it is practically no Biljle ;
it is no " rule of faith " for a human soul. For, to say nothing
of the uncertainties and fallibility of human reasonings, of the
numerous mistakes of science once held to be demonstrated, how

^ Testimony of the Bocks, page 157- '8.

GEOLOGY AND THE BIBLE. 99

preposterous is tlie idea that our Bible held out to all the gen-
erations of men before Cuvier what professed to be an infallible
cosmogom-, while they had no possible means (the science which
was to interpret it being undeveloped) to attain the true mean-
ing, or to discover, by the laws of exposition of the language
itself, their misunderstanding of it ? Such a revelation would be
a mere trap. But, worse than this ; just as all our forefathers,
when reading the first chapter of Genesis, supposed they were
reading a plain story, which they M*ere invited and permitted to
comprehend, l)ut were, all the while, deceived ; so we may now
be unconsciously accepting a number of Bible propositions as
authoritative, and staking our souls upon them, which are des-
tined to receive, several hundred years hence, a totally different
interpretation — an interpretation impossible for us to attain —
from the light of some science as yet undeveloped, either geo-
logical, or astronomical, or ethical, or ethnological. And who
can guess in what part of the Bible these quicksands are ? All
seems like solid ground to us now ; but so did Genesis seem to
our honest forefathers. T\'e repeat, if they sinned against the
Bible's o^^^l independent laws of exegesis in venturing to put a
sense on the first of Genesis, if there was anything in those laws
of exegesis themselves which, properly observed, would have
sufficed to warn them off from their unwarranted interpreta-
tions, they were wholly to blame for their mistake. But if not,
if the Bible was dependent for a fair understanding on a science
as yet wholly undeveloped, then iu those places it really means
nothing in itself ; and in seeming to mean something it is a mere
trap for honest people. And so, we repeat, until human science
shall have made its last advance in every circle of knowledge
which can ever inosculate "^-ith theology, we must remain in
suspense, whether there are not other hollow places in this Bible
which are betraying us. Obviously, such a book is not authori-
tative to a rational soul. And obviously, he who holds the au-
thority of the Bible only in the sense described, is but a ration-
alist in spirit, whatever may be his Christian or his clerical pro-
fession. But, it may be objected, " does not every enlightened
Christian hold that it is the glory of the Bible to receive illustra-
tions from every light of human science ? " We reply : it is its
glory to have all human science ancillary to it, not dominant

100 GEOLOGY AND THE BIBLE.

over it ; to have its meaning illustrated, hut not created, by all
the discoveries of true science.

4. An equally important adjustment is to be made as to the
party T^-hich is bound to assume the burden of proof in this dis-
cussion between the Mosaic and the geologic records. We con-
sider that the theologian, ^vho asserts the infallibility of the
Bible and the independency and sufficiency of its own laws of
interpretation, is entitled to the preliminary presumption ; and,
therefore, the burden of proof rests upon the geologist, who as-
serts a hostile hypothesis. The authoritj' of the Bible, as our
rule of faith, is demonstrated by its own separate and indepen-
dent evidences, literary, historical, moral, internal, prophetical.
It is found by the geologist in possession of the field, and he
must assume the aggressive, and positively dislodge it from its
position. The defender of the Bible need only stand on the
defensive. That is, the geologist may not content himself with
saying that his hypothesis, which is opposed to Bible teachings,
is plausible, that it cannot be scientifically refuted, that it may
adequately satisfy the requirements of all the physical phe-
nomena to be accounted for. All this is nauo;ht, as a success-
ful assault on us. We are not bound to retreat until he has
constructed an absolutely exclusive demonstration of his hy-
pothesis; until h3 has shown, by strict scientific proofs, not
only that his hypyothesis may he the true one, but that it alone
can he the true one ; that it is impossible any other can exclude
it. And we, in order to retain our position, are not at all bound
to construct any physical argument to demonstrate geologically
that Moses' statement of the case is the true one ; for, if the
Bible is true, what it teaches on this subject is proved true by
the biblical evidences, in the absence of all geologic proof. Nor
are we under any forensic obligation to refute the opposing hy-
pothesis of the geologist by geologic arguments farther than
this : that we shall show geologically that his argument is not a
perfect 'and exclusive demonstration. If we merely show, by
any flaw in his conclusion, by the citation of any phenomenon
irreducible to the terms of his hypothesis, that his demonstra-
tion is incomplete, we have successfully maintained the defen-
sive ; we hold the victory.

Now, have geologists always remembered this? Nay, is it

GEOLOGY AND THE BIBLE. 101

not notoriously otherwise? It would seem as though this in-
teresting young science had a sort of fatality for infecting its
votaries with a forgetfulness of these logical responsibilities.
Perhaps this would be found equally true of every other physi-
cal science of wide extent, of complex phenomena and of fasci-
nating character, while in its forming state. But every acute
reader of the deductions of geologists perceives numerous in-
stances where they quietly substitute the "may be" for the
"must be," and step unconsciously from the undisputed proba-
bility of an hypothesis to its undisputed certainty. And one's
observation of nature need proceed but a small way to light
upon instances in which phenomena exist which would receive
a given solution just as plausibl}'- as certain others; while the
geologists imagine a reason for withholding that solution in the
cases wdiich would thus spoil their hypothesis. That they can
not yet claim that exclusive and perfect demonstration of their
hypothesis which is required of their position, as holding the
aggressive, seems very plain from familiar facts. One is the
radical differences of hypothesis to which leading geologists are
committed up to this very day. Sir Charles Lyell makes it
almost the key-note of his system, that all geologic changes
were produced by such causes as are now at work, and operat-
ing, in the main, with no greater speed than they now exhibit.
Hugh Miller, and others, are equally sure that those changes
were produced by successive convulsions and earth-tempests,
revolutionizing in a short time the state of ages. Some recon-
cile the ''stony record" with that of Moses, upon the scheme
advocated by Dr. Chalmers, which pushes back all the mighty
changes to that interval ending, in Genesis i. 2, when "the earth
was without form, and void." Others, with Miller and Professor
Tayler Lewis, adopt the very different theory of the six creative
days extending to vast periods of time. Mr. Miller is certain that
the iossiljlora and /"ccuna indicate just the order, in the main, as
to the succession which their chief developments had in the
geologic ages, which is set down in Genesis as the Avork of tho
several days. Many others, equally great, declare just the op-
posite.

A reasonable mistrust of the perfectness of geological demon-
strations is excited again by instances of obvious haste and

iO'Z GEOLOGY AND THE BIBLE.

inconclusiveness in their inferences from supposed facts. Of
this one or two illustrations must suffice. Few of their writers
rank higher than Sir Charles Lyell. .In the London edition of
his Prlnc'q)les of Geohxjy, 1850, page 205, we have an attempt
to make an estimate of the age of the earth's present crust from
the character of the deep gorge, or great rocky gully, in which
the Niagara river flows from the falls towards Lake Ontario.
The deep part of this channel is said to be about seven miles
long. The author first satisfies himself, on grounds which
might perhaps amount to probability, that this whole gorge
may have been excavated by the torrent itself. This is the first
element of the calculation. Throiigh the rest of the argument
this prol)ability is tacitly turned into a certainty. The next
element to be ascertained is, the rate at which the river now
digs out its channel, and the edge of the cataract recedes. A
previous intelligent inquirer concluded, upon the best testimony
he could collect upon the spot, that the falls receded a yard each
year ; but Sir Charles assumes an average of a foot per year as
the more correct rate, on grounds which he does not state. This
second source of uncertainty is also quietly ignored. Then it is
calculated that the Niagara has been flowing thirty-five thousand
years. While the author does not venture to vouch for this
positively, he concludes by indicating to his reader that his pri-
vate opinion is, the time was more likely longer than shorter.
Now, even the unscientific visitor of Niagara cannot fail to ob-
serve, what Sir Charles himself coiTectly states, that the perpen-
pendicular face of the gorge of the cataract and of the lower
edge of Goat Island reveals this structure : on the top there is a
vast layer or stratum of hard gray limestone, nearly horizontal,
and, at the falls, nearly ninety feet thick, wdiile all below it, to
the bottom of the precipice, is a soft shale. The real obstruc-
tion to the very rapid cutting away of the precipice by the tre-
mendous torrent, is the solidity of the limestone layer whose
surface forms the bottom of tho river above the falls. When
that once gives way the rest is speedily removed. Any person
can easily understand that the permanency with which this lime-
stone layer withstands the water dej)ends chiefly on its thickness,
and also on its dip, or inclination, ai:d on the frequent occur-
rence or absence of fissures or seams, destroying the cohesion of

GEOLOGY AND THE BIBLE. 103

i. 3 masses to each other. Now, will not the reader be surprised
to learn that, even in the tv/o miles which extend from the cata-
ract down to the Suspension Bridge, this all-important stratum
of limestone is diminished more than half in its thickness, the
soit and yielding shale forming the remainder of the cliffs? So
that, to say nothing of the high probability of the occurrence of
•;lie two other causes within the seven miles, we have here a
cause for the recession of the cataract greatly more rapid than
that which now obtains. Sir Charles Lyell concludes with
these words : " At some points it may have receded much faster
than at present, but its general progi'ess was probably slower,
because the cataract, when it began to recede, must have had
nearly twice its present height." Did not the waters then have
more than twice their present momentum? So that common
sense would say that, if there was more earth to be worn and
dug away, there was far more power to do it. Surely, such
reasoning as the above does not make an exclusive and perfect
demonstration !

Another instance shall be taken from the same author. On
page 219 he presents us with an argument for the great age of
the world, from the length of time the Mississippi has been em-
ployed in forming its alluvial delta. The elements of the calcu-
lation are, of course, the area and depth of the alluvial deposit,
giving the whole number of cubic yards composing it, the quan-
tity of water passed down the stream in one year, and the per-
centage of solid matter contained in the water in its average
state of muddiness. The data upon which the depth of the
alluvium is fixed are only two, the average depth of the Gulf of
Mexico, and a well or shaft sunk near Lake Ponchartrain. Ai-e
either of these sufficient ? Is it not customary for strata to dip
towards seas and oceans? If the spot at which the well was
dug happened to bo one of those sunk far below the usual level
by earthquake agencies — and Sir Charles himself saw that such
agencies had produced just such results in the region of the same
river, near New Madrid — would it not come, in the course of a
few hundred years, to receive far more than the average thick-
ness cf alluvial deposit ? But let us come to the other
element, the percentage of sediment in the water. From the
observations of Dr. Kiddell he learns that it is one three-

104 GEOLOGY AND THE BIBLE.

thonsandtli part, in Inilk, of tlie Mater. Two other observers,
Messrs. Brown and Dickeson, make it one five hundred and
twenty-eighth part, and they make the vohime of water one-
third more! Sir Charles concedes that "so great a discrepancy-
shows the need of a new series of experiments." Did either of
tlje observers take pains to ascei-tain whether the hirger part of
the sediment does not gravitate towards the bottom of the water
while flowing, and to go doMn any part of the one hundred and
sixty-eight feet, which measures the depth of the river at Kew
Orleans, to procure the water which they examined ? We are
not informed. The observations on the annual volume of water
were made at New Orleans. '\\'as any allowance made for the
waters which flow off in such vast quantities through the delta,
by the hayous, and during the gigantic freshets, leaving the main
channel above Ncav Orleans? We are not informed. Again,
the total volume of the water passing New Orleans in a year
depends on its velocity. Now, experienced pilots and boatmen
of the Mississippi are generally of opinion that the lower strata
of water in its channel run with far more velocity than the sur-
face. Hence the calculators, in gauging the surface velocity,
were probably entirely at fault as to the real volume of water.
Last, it is universally known that the Mississippi is nearly twice
as muddy, on the average, at the head of the delta as at New
Orleans ! How much is this notable calculation worth after all
these deductions? But, for all that, he chooses to assume Dr.
Eiddell's estimate for his basis, and thus proves (!j that the Mis-
sissippi has been running one hundred thousand years.

Now, let the reader note, that we do not advance the incon-
clusiveness of these two calculations as sufficient proof, by itself,
that the world is not thirty-five thousand, or one hundred thou-
sand years old. But we advance it upon the principle expressed
in the adage, " Ux pede Jlercidem.'" The detection of such
hast}- and shalloAv reasoning gives sufficient groiind of mistrust
as to their general conclusions.

Another specimen shall be drawn fi'om Hugh Miller, ludi-
crous enough to relieve the tedium of this discussion. In the
Testimony of the HocJcs (Boston : 1857, p. 259), he is arguing
that the fossil animals were produced by natural law, vast ages
ago, because they exhibit marks of creative design similar to

GEOLOGY AND THE BIBLE. 105

those vre now tind in the hving works of nature. One of his
evidences is a little coral, the " Smithia Pengellyi," which con-
structed its bony cells such that the fracture of them presented
a surface remarkably similar to a certain calico pattern which
had proved extremely popular among the ladies. The conclu-
sion is, that as this calico must have been very pretty — as
though the better part of creation had never been known to ex-
hiliifc their sweet caprices by admiring things for their very ugli-
ness— the creator undoubtedly caused these coral insects to
construct their cells in this way for their prettiness! To us
duller mortals it is not apparent that the " final cause " of coral
insects was to be ready to have their stony buildings cracked
open by geologists' hammers ; we thought they had been made
for an existence where, in the main, no human eye could seo
them, especially as the species was j^re-Adamite by myriads of
years. Mr. Miller's notion of the design of creation seems to
be very much akin to that of the old Scotch crone, who, when-
ever she beheld a beautiful young girl, had no other apprecia-
tion of her graces than to conceive " what a lovely corpse she
would make."

Once more : while the currently received theory of the cos-
mogony is ingenious, it is at least douljtful whether the adjust-
ment of all the phenomena of so complex a case to the hypo-
thesis, has been, or can be, accurately carried out. But, until
this is done, it is not demonstrated. If that scheme is true,
then all the material substancec which make up the chemist's
list of simple substances must have been derived from the ele-
ments of the atmosphere, of water, and of the primitive rocks.
For, if we go back to the beginning, we find, according to the
current hypothesis of the geologists, nothing in existence, ex-
cept a heated atmosphere, watery vapor, and a fluid globe of
melted granite, basalt, etc. All the rest, secondary, tertiary, al-
luvial, is the result of cooling, crusting, depressions and up-
heavals of this crust, disintegration, and cedimentary deposits.
But, is it certain that air, pure water, and primitive rocks contain
all the chemical substances? And a still harder question i»
this : has it ever been ascertained whether the chemical condi-
tions and combinations, in which the elements exist in the prim-
itive rocks, and then in tlioso called secondary and tertiary.

106 GEOLOGY AXD THE BIBLE.

are sucli as are consistent with, this lijpotliesis ? Has it been
ascertained tliat the small percentage of sihcate of lime found
in some of the granites — only some — and other primitive rocks,
within such a distance from their surface as could, bv any pos-
sibility, be subjected to disintegration, can account for all the
vast masses of carhonate of lime — no longer silicate — in all the
limestone, marbles, chalks, coral, and calcareous clays of the
newer strata? But the world is entitled to have these questions
answered before the geologists claim a demonstration of their
hypothesis.

Eecent events furnish us with another doubt. One of the
main arguments by which the fossil animals of all but the most
recent species are shown to bo pre-Adamite, as it is claimed, is,
that no fossil human remains, or marks of human handiwork,
have been found among them. And geologists have admitted —
as they must — that the well-attested discover}' of such remains
among the earlier strata would demand a surrender and recon-
struction of their theory. But lately the scientific world has
been agitated by the repoi-t that, near Atniens, in France, arrow
heads of flint, and other Avorks of human industry, have been
found unquestionably in a strain m, and along with fossils, uni-
iormly assigned by geologists to a pre-Adamite period. And
now, it is stated that a scholar of high qualifications, Eawlinson,
Jias visited the spot, and is satisfied of the correctness of the
assertion.

For these and many other reasons, we consider the geological
hypothesis as not yet a demonstration; and, hence, we claim
the right to stand upon the defensive, upon the impregnable
bulwarks of Scriptui'e evidences, until we are positively dis-
lodged. We deny that any logical obligation rests upon us to
present any scientific argument, or to establish any hypothesis,
on the subject. We are not bound to show, by natural science,
what is the true rationale of the earth's creation. Our defence
is thoroughly accomplished when we show that any adverse
"theory is not yet exclusively demonstrated.

5. The most vital point in the relations between theology and
geology we have reserved for the last. It is one which has
been summarily disposed of by geologists, without condescend-
ing to weigh its vast import. How far must the logical value of

GEOLOGY AND THE BIBLE. 107

the inferences of natural science from natural appearances be
modified by the admitted fact of a creni'iun! The character of
these inferences is the following: "We see a given natural law
produce a given structure ; we find the remains of a similar
structure which has been somehow produced in the past; we
infer that it must have been produced by a similar natural law."
The just application of this kind of reasoning, v.'ithin its proper
limits, is fuUv admitted ; it has been the main lever in the dis-
coveries of natural science. But now, we ask, how far should
its application be limited by the knowledge of the truth, that
someiL'Jiere in the past some omnipotent creative act must have
intervened? This is the question.

Unless geologists are willing candidly to take an atheistic
Tiew of cosmogony, the fact of an absolute act of creaiion must
be admitted somewhere in the past. We will not insult the
intelligence and piety of our readers by supposing it necessary
to recite the arguments which disprove an atheistic origin of
the present order of things, or the emphatic admissions of all
the greatest teachers of natural science, that nature obviously
discloses her own origin in the creative will of an eternal Intelli-
gence. The short-lived theory of <.lerelo2)riienth.i\.^ been already
crashed beneath the combined arguments and ridicrde of scien-
tific geologists themselves. There is, however, one fact, pecu-
liarly germane to this point, that the Christian geologists of
Great Britain and America claim it as the peculiar glory of their
science, that it presents an in-^dncible and original argument for
a creation. It is this : the stony records of successive genera
of fossil plants and animals show that prior genera perished
wholly, and genera entirely new appear on the stage of life.
!Now, as the development theory is repudiated, the entrance of
■each new genus evinces, beyond a doubt, a new and separate
creative act. Let us grant this for argument's sake. It is
agreed, then, that terrestrial structures began, somewhere in
the past, in God's creative act.

But now, it is most obvious, that if a scientific observer had
been present, just after that creative act, to ol)serve the struc-
tures produced by it, any observations or inferences he might
have draMTi from the seeming marks of the working of natural
laws upon them, would have been worthless to prove that those

108 GEOLOGY AND THE BIBLE.

specimens originated in natural laws, "We repeat, once admit
that a creative act has intervened cmyicJiere in the past, and wo
should have had there, if we had been present, one case in
■vvhich all deductions and inferences of the natural origin of
things from their natural appearances would have been w^orth-
less. Such analogical arguments would have been cut across
and superseded utterly by the creative act. This is indisput-
able. We may illustrate it by the instances usually presented
by the sound old writers of the class of Dick — instances wdiich
have far more significance than has usually been admitted.
Suppose, for illustration's sake, that the popular apprehension
of the Bible account of the creation of Adam's body and of the
trees of Paradise is true. But now a naturalist of wour modern
school investigates aifairs. He finds towering oaks with acorns-
on them! Acorns do not form by na'ture in a day — some spe-
cies of oaks require two summers to mature them. But worse-
than this. He has ascertained by natural history that one
summer's growth forms only one of the concentric rings in the
grain of the tree's stock. He cuts down one of the spreading
monarchs of the garden, and discovers that it has a hundred
rings. So he coolly rejects the story that this garden began
last week, and insists on it that Adam has told a monstrous fib
in saying so ; that it is not less than a hundred years old. Yet.
Adam was right ; for the creative act explained all. But let us
suppose another naturalist returning after some nine or ten cen-
turies. He visits the venerable tomb of the father of all the
living, and learns from his heir, Setli, how that his father sprang,,
at the bidding of God, out of the dust, a full-formed, adult man.
The naturalist takes up a leg-bone of Adam's skeleton; he re-
marks : " The person to whom this bone belonged at death was
evidently an adult ; for its length, size, solidity and density show
this." He saws off a section, polishes it down to a translucent
film of bone, and subjects it to his microscope and his chemical
solvents. He remarks : " Here is the cellular structure of gela-
atinous matter, which once formed the incipient bone of the
foetus; and these cells I now find filled with the deposit of
proto-2)Jiosp}tate of lime, giving it its stony strength and hard-
ness. But I know that the introduction of this earth into the
cells of the soft bone of the infant is just the process by which

GEOLOGY AND THE BIBLE. 109

nature now forms tlie bones of adults, by gradual growtli.
"Whence I learn tliat this individual, like his children, gi*ew,
during the space of twenty-one years, from ixfmtus to an adult;
and the myth of his son Seth, concerning his instantaneous
creation, is an attempt to impose on my credulity. This attempt
I, as a philosopher, shall repudiate with contempt." Yet Seth.
was right, and the philosopher ■^n.'ong; for, not to rely on the
inspired testimony alone, this natural argument would prove
that Adam was once an infant, and, therefore, had a father.
The same argument, applied to the body of Adam's father,
would equally prove that he also was once an infant, and had a
father. And it would prove equally well an infinite series of
£nite human fathers, extending back to all eternity. But such
B, series, philosophy herself shows, is impossible !

But, second — and the remark is of prime importance — any
creative act of God, producing a structure which was intended
to subsist under the working of natural laws, must produce one
Ijresenting some of the seeming traces of the operation of such
laws. We confidently challenge geologists who admit that there
has ever been any creation at all to imagine a product of it
which could be different. For, note, all these theistic geologists
repudiate the theory of development of genera from different and
lower genera. Whence it follows, that the first specimen of God's
immediate handiwork, the very first moment it left his hand,
must have stood forth as truly natural as any of its progeny
which were destined to proceed from it by natural law. And
the same thing must have been true, to some extent, of all inor-
ganic structures. If they had no traits of the natural, as they
came from God's hand, then they were incapable of becoming,
thenceforth, the subjects of natural law. ^

Hence, third, it follows that, if once a creative act is admitted
to have occurred somewhere in the past, it may have occurred
anywhere in the past, so far as the deductions of natural science
from the marks of natural law upon its products go. In other
words, the value of all these analogical inferences as to the date
at which, and the mode by which, these objects of nature came

' But the fossils! especially animal ? Ans. If the invalidity of the argnnients
for the sequence aud age of unorganized strata be admitted, then the proof that
iossils are i^re-Adamite is gone.

110 GEOLOGY AND THE BIBLE.

into being, are ■^•ortliless just so soou as tliey attempt to pass
back of the earliest historical testimony. For the creative act,
•wherever it has intervened (and "U'lio can tell, when historical
testimony fails, "s^■here it may not have intervened ?) has utterly
superseded and cut across all such inferences. Nor can these
natural analogies prove that the creative act has not thus inter-
vened at a given place in the past, because the whole validity of
the analogies depends on the supposed absence of the creative
act. Hence, all the reasonings of geologists seem to us utterly
vitiated in their very source, when they attempt to fix, from
natural analogies, the age and mode of production of the earth's
structure.

This objection is usually dismissed by geologists with a sort
of summary contempt, or with a grand outcry of opposition. It
does, indeed, cut deep into the pride and pretence of their sci-
ence ; at one blow it sweeps off that whole domain of its pre-
tended discoveries — the region of the infinite past prior to all
history — in which the pride, conceit, and curiosity of man's
fallen intellect most crave to expatiate. But let us see whether
it is possible to impugn the simple premises on which our con-
clusion rests, or the inevitable result from them. Is there a
single answer which can be presented that is even of any scien-
tific weight?

It is urged, in substance, by Hitchcock, that if the validity of
their analogical reasonings from natural laws is denied in this
case, the very foundations of all natural science are overthrown.
But what is this, more than an appeal to our fears and preju-
dices? It is as though one said, when we refuse to accept a
given species of evidence outside its projDer range, that we
thereby invalidate the force ot all evidence. The question is :
what is the proper domain of these inferences fi'om the analo-
gies of natural law? Within their ovra domain, true science
accepts them as valid ; outside of it, true science herself will
concvu' with theology in arresting them. Let these premises be
granted, viz., given the sufficient evidence that supernatural
causes are aU absent in a certain class of effects ; and given the
fact that just such eiiect^. have usually resulted from a certain
natural law: then the inference may be very valid that these
effects did result from the operation of this law. But this infer-

GEOLOGY AND THE BIBLE. Ill

ence cannot help ns to determine tlie first premise, whetlier all
supernatural causes were truly absent, for the very reason that
it depends on that premise in part. This would be to reason in
a circle, with a A-engeance. The application of these inferences^
upon which Hitchcock and the other geologists insist, is, in fact,
precisely a case of that induction from mere uniformity of ante-
cedent and consequent, as far as observed, which Bacon con-
demned under the term '■'■ Inductlo per eniimerationem s'an-
pUcem^'' and which it was one of his chief tasks to explode
as utterly worthless. He proves that it can never raise more
than a meagre probabilitj-- of the correctness of its conclusions
where it is not supported by some better canon of induction.
To explain, the shallow observer says: "I find that, so far as
my observation has been enabled to test the matter, a given
consequent phenomenon, named B, has always been preceded
by a given antecedent, named A. Hence, I conclude that, in
every other case where B appears A was its cause." The obvi-
A-ious vice of this is, that it is wholly unproved that some other
cause capable of producing B Avas not present, besides A, in the
last cases. The induction is worthless until that is proved
beyond a peradventure. To apply this : our modern geologists
argue, for instance, that wherever they have been able to ex-
amine the actual process by which the formation of stratified
rod's takes place, the cause is sedhnentary action. Therefore,
wherever any other stratified rocks are seen, their producing
cause must have been sedimentary action. Here we haA'e pre-
cisely the worthless induction per enumerationem simplicern,
for the possible presence of some other cause capable of pro-
ducing stratified rocks has not been excluded. And every one
but the atheist admits that another such cause may have been
present in the shape of creative p)oi':er. Until the presence of
that cause is excluded by some other evidence, the conclusion
is not proved. The vice of the argument is just like that in the
famous sophism of Hume against miracles — it is not worthy of
a Humeist. And we conceive that there is no uncharitableness
in declaring that the covert tendencies of all such philosophiz-
ings are to Hume's cdheism. Such reasonings cannot be com-
plete for such a result in all cases, unless the supernatural be
wholly excluded and the secret tendency to do so, which is

112 GEOLOGY AND THE BIBLE.

Tirtiial atheism, is tlie true spring of all sucli reasonings in sci-
ence. Bnt it niaj be retorted: are we, then, to snrrender all
dependence on inferences from natural law, as certain evidence,
throughout the whole extent of the natural sciences? We reply,
no; wherever the inquirer into nature is certain that the facts
he investigates are truly under the dominion of natiu-al laAv, so
far such reasonings are valid. As to the origin and history of
nature in the past, they are valid no farther back than we can
be assured of the absence of the supernatural; and we know
jiot how such assurance can be gained by us, save by the testi-
mony of human experience and history-, or of inspiration. This
conclusion does, indeed, curb the arrogance of human science,
but it does not affect in the least any part of its legitimate do-
minions, or of its practical value to mankind. It does, indeed,
disable us fro)n determining the age, date, and origin of the
structures nature presents us, but it does not prevent our dis-
covering the laws of those structures ; and the latter is the dis-
covery to which the whole utility of science belongs.

Again, why should the theistic philosopher desire to push
back the creative act of God to the remotest possible age, and
to reduce his agency to the smallest possible 'ininhnuoii, as is
continually done by these speculations? "What is gained b}' it?
Instead of granting that God created a ivorld, a xoafioz, they
continually strive to show that he only created the rude germs
of a world, attributing the actual origin of the fewest possible
elements to God's almighty act, and supposing the most j)Ossible
to be the result of subsequent development under natural law._^
AVe repeat the question : what is truly gained by this, if once
the lingerings of covert atheism be expelled? Admit in good
faith the facts of an actual Creator, an almighty and omniscient
agent, and of an actual creation, anywhere in the past, and it
will appear just as reasonable that God should have created the
whole finished result, as a part. To his infinite faculties there
is nothing hai'd, as opposed to easy; nothing intricate, as oj^-
posed to simple; nothing great, as contrasted with the small.
It was just as easy for him to speak into existence a finished uni-
verse, with all its beautiful order, "by the word of his power," as
to jjroduce the incipient elements out of which "laws of nature"
were slowly and laboriously to evolve the result.

GEOLOGY AND THE BIBLE. 113

For, wliat are those laws of nature, and what their source ?
Do they not originate, after all, in the mere will and immediate
power of God? None biTt the atheist disputes this. And,
although we cordially grant that the properties of bodies, by
which they are constituted forces in the great s^'stem of causa-
tion under natural law, arc actual properties, and not mere
seeming bhnds or shmdacra of properties; though we grant
that they are truly intrinsic in bodies, as constituted by God's
creative will ; yet who, except the atheist, denies that their op-
eration is sustained and regulated by the eyer-present, special
providence of God? Hence, if we say natural lavy does this or
that, as opposed to supernatural creation, we have not in the
least simplified, or relieved, the perpetual miracle of God's
working. There is still a manifold and coimtless operation of
infinite power and wisdom.

But, if the natural philosophers still persist in claiming the
universal application of their principle, that wherever there is
an analogy to the results of natural law, there we must conclude
natural law alone has wrought, we can clearly evince that their
position is utterly untenable and inconsistent, save for the tho-
rough atheist. For, as already intimated, push back the super-
natural creative intervention as far as we may, it is impossible
for us to conceivo how it could produce any structm-e adapted
to the subsequent dominion of natural law, ■s\ithout giving it
the jDroperties which such law gives to its similar products.
To give the most comjilete proof of the justice of this remark,
let us take that theory of the solar system which the unbeHev-
ing La Place is said to have doubtfully suggested as a possible
one, and which our nominally Christian philosophers have so
incontinently adopted, without demonstration, as demonstra-
tively the true one. Suppose that the natural historian, coming
from some older system, had begun his investigation of ours
on the principles of these philosophers at that stage when no-
thing existed but a nebula of incandescent compound vapor,
rotating from west to east around an axis of motion. This is
the stage, we understand, at which it is now most popular to
suppose cooling, liquefying, and solidifj'ing processes began,
resulting in a sun and jjlanets ; when the only shadow of truly
scientific evidence on which La Place grounded his doubtful

Voi. Ill— 8

114 GEOLOGY AND THE BIBLE.

STirmise, lias been dissipated by Lord Rosse, resolving tlie nehulcs
into clusters of well-defined stars. How would this scientific
observer have speculated on what was presented at that priir.i-
tive stage ? Had he used the confident logic of our geologists,
he must have said to himself: "motion in matter is always the
result of impact ; therefore, this rotary motion which I now be-
hold must be the resxdt of some mechanical force, developed by
natural action, either mechanical or chemical. And, again, va-
por implies evaporation^ and sensible heat suggests latent heat
rendered sensible by chemical action. There must, therefore,
have been a previous and different condition of this matter,
now volatilized, heated, and moving. These conditions are the
results of the working of natural laws ; and that implies a pre-
vious material, in a diflferent condition, to be the subject of that
working." Xow, this reasoning would be precisely as good as
that of geologists. But Avhat would it prove ? It would make
matter and the organism thereof eternal; for, after ascending
by such reasonings one stage higher, we should be equally im-
pelled to ascend still another, and another. Thus it would
exclude a creator totally from creation. Hence, it appears that .
the principles we have criticised are unsound and inconsistent,
in any hands except those of the atheist. Once admit a creator
and a creation, and the validity of all inferences from the seem-
ing analogies of natiu-e, as to origin of things, is ^-itiated the
moment we pass back of the authentic light of historical testi-
mony. Once admit a creator and a creation, and nothing is
gained, in logic, by attempting to push back the creative act.

In fine, if that account which theology gives of the origin of
the universe is to be accepted at all, it appears to us that the
most philosopical conception of a creation would be the follow-
ing: that God, in producing a world which his purposes re-
required, should pass immediately under the dominion of natural
laws, wotdd produce it with just the properties which those laws
•were to develop. Thus God, intending to have trees perpetu-
ated by a law of germination and growth, would most naturally
create the first tree of the gemis just such as germination and
growth would produce. And so the whole structure of his world
would be made, at first, -R-ith an adaptation to the laws which
were intended subsequently to regulate and modify it. And

GEOLOGY AND THE BIBLE. 115

just liere tlieologj inosculates witli cosmogony, and gives us a
consideration whicli will strike every just mind with no little
force, while it is one of that kind which the man of narrow spe-
cialities is almost incompetent to estimate. What was God's
true end in the creation of a material world? Reason and
Scripture answer: it was to furnish a stage for the existence
and action of reasonable moral beings. The world was made
for MAN to inhabit. "Without the presence of this its rational
occu2)aiit and earthly master, all the manifestations of intelli-
gent design and moral attributes, given in the order of nature,
would be an aimless and senseless work. For, as light would
would be no light were there no eye in the universe, so God's
declai-ative glory in the wisdom and goodness of his works is no
glory till there is a mind to comprehend it. Now, such being
God's end, it seems far more rational to suppose that God would
produce at once the world which was needed for his purpose,
rather than spend hundreds of thousands of years in grow-
ing it.

But, bearing in mind the object for which God created a
world, we shall see that it becomes the most reasonable suppo-
sition that he should have made it, from the first, with some of
those traits which geologists suppose have all resulted from the
working of natural laws. For instance, God's purposes, as at
present revealed, prompted him to subject the surface of our
globe to that class of agencies which are continually adding
to its sedimentary strata of rocks and earths. Well, it is the
most reasonable, the most philosophic supposition, that the
same purposes prompted him to create a globe which had, from
the first, some strata of the same sort. That the surface of the
globe should be from the first stratified was necessary, for in-
stance, to produce springs and veins of water, and that whole
economy of irrigation which makes it a tenable home for sen-
tient creatures.

If^ therefore, there is any authentic testimony that God did,frorrh
the first, create such an earth, no sound inference drawn from,
natural analogies is of any force to rebut that testimony.

? 1

A CAUTIOX ACtATXST AXTI-CHRISTIAX sciexce.

"Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the
tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ " — Colos-
siANS, ii. 8.

EVEKY Ciiristiau sliould be familiar with the fact that the
hiTUiau mind, as well as heart, has been impaired bv the
fall. Men " so became dead in sin, and wholly defiled in all
the faculties and parts of soul and bod}-." From the nature of
the case, the misguided intellect is unconscious of its own yice ;
for consciousness of it would expel it. Its nature is to cause
him who is deceived to think that error is truth, and its power
is in masking itself under that honest guise. Why, then, need
we wonder that every age must needs have its vain and deceit-
ful philosophy, and " oppositions of science, falsely so called ? "
And hew can the Christian expect that uninspired science will
ever be purged of uncertainty and error, by any organon of in-
vestif^ation invented by man ? Even if the organon were abso-
lute, pure truth, its application by fallen minds must always
ensure in the results more or less of error, except in those exact
sciences of magnitudes where the definiteness of the predica-
tions and fewness of the premises leave no room for serious
mistake.

Even when a body of honest and sincere men, like this Synod,
attempts to a^^ply certain common principles to cpiestions of
moral and ecclesiastical detail, theii' differences betray the fact
that the operation of their reasons is imperfect. Yet these are
the men to whom the church looks to teach the way of salvation.
Now we demonstrate in our very church courts the fallibility of
our minds when we are left to ourselves. How then can any
man be willing to entrust to us the guidance of a soul, which is

' A sermon preached in the Synod of Virginia, October 20, 1871, and published
by request of Lieutenant-Governor John L. Marye, Major T. J. Kirkpatrick,
George D. Gray. J. N. Gordon, F. Johnston, and others, elders of the Presby-
terian Church.

116

A CAUTION ACtAIXST ANTI-CHRISTIAX SCIENCE. 117

wortli more than the whole world, and -nhose loss is irrepara-
ble ? No thinking man will commit himself without reserve, in
this thing, to an}' human direction. "We must feel our need of
an unerring guide ; and hence the superiority of that religion
which gives us as prophet and teacher that Christ who is "the
image of the invisible God, born before all creation " (ch. i. 15),
"in whom are hid all the treasures of Tvisdom and knowledge,"
(ii. 3); and "in whom dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead
bodily," (ii. 9). How blessed is the man who is " complete in
him I " He has an infallible guidance, and no other is sufficient
for an immortal soul.

The Colossian Christians were enticed to leave this prophet
for a shadowy philosophic theory of their day. This was a
mixture of Oriental, Rabbinical and Greek mysticism, which
peopled heaven with a visionary heirarchy of semi-divine be-
ings, referred the Messiah to their class, and taught men to
expect their salvation from their intercession, combined with
Jewish asceticisms and will-worship. Thus we are taught, both
by uninspired, but authentic history, and by intimati ans of the
holy apostle in the Epistle itself. Tliis fanciful scheme was
supported by the '' traditions of men " ; that is to say, by the
inculcation of favorite masters of this vain philosophy ; and by
"the inidiments of the world," by this world's first principles,
instead of Christ's declarations. But the apostle solemnly re-
minded them that this philosophy was vain and deceitful ; and
moreover, that the price of preferring it to the Christian system
was the loss of the soul. Thus, the real aim of the seducer was
to despoil the soul of its salvation, and to make it a captive to
falsehood and corruption.

The prevalent vain, deceitful philosophy of our day is not
mystical, but phj-sical and sensuous. It affects what it calls
"positivism." It even makes the impossible attempt to give
the mind's philosophy a sensualistic explanation. Its chief
study is to ascertain the laws of material nature and of animal
life. It refers everything to their power and dominion ; and
from them pretends to contradict the Scriptural account of the
origin of the earth and man. Does it profess not to interfere
with the region of spiritual truth, because concerned about mat-
ter? We find, or the contrary, that physical science always

118 A CAUTIOX AGAINST ANTI-CHP..5ITIAX SCIENCE.

lias some tendency to become anti-theological. This teiidency
is to be accounted for by two facts : one is, that man is a de-
praved creature, whose natural dispqsition is eninitj against
God. Hence this leaning away from Him, in many worldly
minds, perhaps semi-conscious, which does " not like to retain
God in its knowledge." The other explanation is, that these
physical sciences continually tend to exalt naturalism ; their
pride of success in tracing natural causes, tempts them to refer
everything to them, and thus to substitute them for a spiritual,
personal God. Again, then, is it time for the watchman on the
walls of Zion to utter the apostle's " beware." Again are incau-
tious souls in danger of being despoiled of their redemption by
" vain deceitful philosophy." To enforce this caution, I urge :

I. The attitude of many physicists at this time towards reve-
lation is threatening. I perceive this in the continual encroach-
ments which they make upon Scripture teachings. Many of you,
my brethren, can remember the time when this modern impulse
did not seek to push us any farther from the old and current
understanding of the Bible cosmogony than to assert the exist-
ence of a pre- Adamite earth, with its own distinct fauna and
fiora, now all entombed in the fossiliferous strata of rocks. To
meet this discovery no harder re-adjustment was required than
that of Drs. Vjq Smith and Chalmers, who proposed to amend
the expositions of Moses by supposing that between "the begin-
ning " and that epoch of void and formless chaos immediately
1 )efore the six days' work, there was a lapse of myriads of years ;
of which Moses tells us nothing, because the creatures and revol-
utions which filled these ages had nothing to do with the history
of man's redemption.

But now we are currently required by physicists to admit that
the six days' work of God was not done in six days, but in six
vast tracts of time.

That the deluge did not cover "all the high hills which
were under the whole heaven," but only a portion of Central
Asia.

That man has been living upon the globe, in its present dis-
pensation, for more than twenty thousand years, to say the least,
as appears by some fossil remains of him and his handiwork ;
and that the existence of the species is not limited to the five

A CAUTION AGAINST ANTI-CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 119

thoxisand nine liuudred years assigned it by the Mosaic clirou-
oiogy.

That the "nations were not divided in the earth after the flood
bv the famihes of the sons of Noah ;" and that God did not " make
of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the
earth ;" bnt that anatomy and ethnology show there are several
distinct species, having separate origins.

That God did not create a finished world of sea and laud, but
only a fire-mist, or incandescent, rotating, nebnlons mass, which
condensed itself into a world.

And last, that man is a development from the lowest type of
animal life.

Can the Scriptures, my brethren, be shown plastic enough to
be remoulded, without total fracture of their authority, into agree-
ment with all these views ?

Again, the whole posture and tone of this class of physicists
towards revelation is hostile and depreciatory ; their postulates,
with their manner of making them, imply a claim of far more
authority for human science than is allowed to inspiration. Thus,
the attempt to restrain any corollaries, however sweeping, which
they may draw by the teachings of Scripture is usually resented.
But in any other field of reasoning, if two lines of seeming argu-
ment lead to contradictory conclusions, men always admit the
rule that triiths must be consistent among themselves, and, in
obedience to it, they surrender the weaker line to the stronger,
thus removing the collision. But these physicists never dream
of surrendering a deduction simply to tha Bible contradiction of
it. Thus they betray very plainly whether they think human
science more certain than revelation. The very attempt to bring
the truth of their scientific conclusions to the test of the Bible is
resisted as an "infringment of the rights of science," an unjust
restraint upon the freedom of their intellects. Now these men
will scarcely claim for a man a right to argue himself into the
belief of demonstrated falsehoods. The implication is, that the
Scriptures really settle nothing by their own testimony ; that is,
that they have no true authority ^^'itll these scholars. The pub-
lic mind has become so habituated to this imperious attitude of
physical science, that it is hard for you to take in its full signifi-
iCance. To enable you to measure it, I will ask you to represent

120 A CAUTION AGAINST ANTI-CHRISTIAN SCIENCE.

to yourselves that some of ns theologians should raise the cor-
resjiondiug outcry' against the physicists : that we should be
heard exclaiming, " We resent the intrusions of physical science
upon our divine science, as an infringement of the rights of the-
ology ; and we resist them wherever they contradict our infer-
ences, as an unjust restraint upon the freedom of man's intellect,
when expatiating in this noblest of all its domains !" Realize to
yourselves the astonishment Avith which scientific worldly men
would listen to our outcry. They would deem it the extrava-
gance of lunacy in us ! And, indeed, we should be rather fortu-
nate if you also did ]iot sympathize a good deal with the charge!
It is, in this matter, just as it is in all other cases where Chris-
tians and the world meet on common, social grounds. Every-
body thinks it obviously reasonable that Avhere a collision would
arise, the Christian people must concede, in order to avoid giv-
ing offence to the worldly. But should the Christians in any
case require the world to concede anything in order to avoid
giving offence to the church, in the common social arena, although
the Christians pay just as good money as the world does for
their share, their claim would appear excessively queer, indeed
foolish, and wholh' out of the question! Why, what are Chris-
tians for, if not to make sacrifices and be imposed on ? But, if
two coordinate sciences impinge against each other, the equality
of their authority gives the advocates of the one just as much
right of complaint as the advocate of the other, until special in-
quiry has settled where the fault of the contradiction lies. The
feeling which I have above described shows that, in this case,
the sciences of nature and of redemption are not thought coor-
dinate, and that the latter is regarded as of inferior authority.

We hear the physicists, again, very condescendingly, lament-
ing the imprudence of the theologians in thrusting the Scrip-
tures into collision with their sciences. They regret, they tell
us, the damage which is thus inevitably done to the credit of
religion. They are, indeed, quite willing to patronize the Chris-
tian religion as a useful affair, provided it is sufficiently submis-
sive in its behaviour. But their conception about the collision
between it and physical science is just that of the engine-driver
upon the collision between a child and his mighty locomotive :
it was a catastrophe much to be lamented, but only on the child'a

A CAUTION AGAINST ANTI-CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 121

account! Sometimes we are told that tlieology has nothing to-
do with science ; that onr imprudence is like that of Hoplini and
Phineas, in risking the ark of God in tlieir war with the pagans.
But what if the Philistines invade the very sanctuary ? Shall
the ark of God, at their bidding, be expelled from its home on
earth ? And if the price of its quiet is to be, that it shall have
no Shekinah of glory to dwell upon its mercy-seat, and no tables-
of testimony within it, written by the finger of God, we may as
well let the enemy take the empty casket. Now, all these as-
sumptions betray too obviously the belief of their authors that
the Bible is fallible, but science infallible.

Again : While I do not charge infidelity upon all physicists,
the tendency of much of so-called modern science is skeptical.
The advocates of these new conclusions may plead that they only
postidate a new exposition of Scripture, adjusted to the results-
of the " advanced modern thought." But I ask, can any exegesis
make our Bilile speak all the propositions which I enumerated
above, and all the rest which it may please the adventurous in-
novators to announce, without damaging its authority as a sure
rule of faith? The common sense of most men will conclude
that such a book is only a lump of clay in the hand of priest-
craft, to be moulded into such shape as may suit its imj)ostures.
We freely grant all that can be said in favor of caution and ex-
haustive study, in placing a meaning upon the words of Scrip-
ture; but a Bil)le which does not assert its own independent
meaning, as fairly interpreted by itself ; a Bible which shall wait
for distinct and changing human sciences to tell us what it shall
be permitted to signify, is no siifficient rule of faith for an im-
mortal soul. Those who know the current tendencies of the
physical sciences well know that we utter no slander in saying
that they are towards disbelief of revelation. We have the ex-
plicit testimony of an eye-witness in the scientific association of
the year, held at Indianajjolis, that the great majority of the
members from the Northern States openly or tacitly disclaimed
inspiration ; and this, while many of them are pew-holders, elders
— yea, even ministers — in the Christian churches. When asked
why they continued to profess a religion which they did not be-
lieve, some answered that the exposure and discussion attending
a recantation Avould be inconvenient ; some, that it would be pain-

122 A CAUTION AGAINST ANTI-CHRISTIAN SCIENCE.

fill to tlieir friends ; some, that Christianity "vvas a good thing for
their sons and daughters, because of its moral restraints.

Both in the British Isles and in this country, the very worst
and most reckless of these physical speculations now receiye the
most mischieyous diffusion. They are inserted in popular text-
books, and taught to youth, as though they were well-established
scientific truths and yeritable organs of mental discipline ; and
that, eyen, in some colleges professedly Christian. They are
hawked about at second-hand, l)y popular lecturers, as though
they were the commonplaces of science. We find them strained,
in feeble but malignant solution, into the magazines which in-
trude themselyes into our families as suitable reading for the
Christian household. So that college lads can cultiyate, under
their father's own roof, by this aid, a nascent contempt for their
fathers' Bibles, along yvith tlieir sprouting mustaches; and
misses can be taught to pass judgment at once on the blunders
of Moses and the triiimphs of Parisian millinery. Worse than
all, we sometimes hear of their utterance from the pulpit b}' min-
isters, who treat of "Maa in Genesis and Geology," intimating,
in no doubtful way, that the former record of man's origin is to
be corrected by the latter.

Beware, then, my brethren, lest any man spoil you through
this vain, deceitful philosophy. Bethink yourselyes what is to
be done. Are you ready to surrender the infallibility of your
Bibles ? The advocates of these new opinions may plead that
we are not to assume in advance the inspiration of the whole
Scriptures, when, as they say, the very question in debate is,
whether tlieir sciences do not prove them fallible in part. Even
if we granted this, it is still time that we knew where we stand.
It is high time that the true quality of this antagonism were un-
masked. Let us no longer say, " Peace, peace, if there is no
■peace.'' Consider how disastrous it may be to have these new
opinions asserted without contradiction. It may be that your
son, or daughter, or young pupil, is just now experiencing the
bitter struggle of the carnal mind against the calls of the sanc-
tifying Spirit, or that inflamed appetite is panting to overleap
the odious but wholesome restraints of the revealed law. How
dangerous, at this critical hour, to have them taught that phil-
osophers have found, amidst the stony atrata and musty fossils

A CAUTION AGAINST ANTI-CHIilSTIAN SCIENCE. 123

■which they explore, iincloubted evidence of mistakes in Moses,
Paul, and Christ ! I tell you that this has become a case under
that general truth of which the apostle so faithfully warns us,
that " the friendship of the world is enmity to God." You must
resist, or you must practically surrender your Bibles. You will
have to " takes sides " for or against your God. You will find
yourselves under a necessity of forbidding the inculcation of this
intrusive error to your children, and its entrance into your fami-
lies, as though it were established truth ; no matter what odiwm
you may incur, or what institutions or men, styled Christian,
may follow the fashion of the times ; else, if things go as they
now do, the church will have a generation of infidel sons.

II. And this is the position on which the Christian pastor
should stand. Unless our Bible — when cautiously and candidly
interpreted by its own light — is inspired and iufallilile, it is no
sufficient rule of faith for an immortal soul. Such the Bible is,
notwithstanding all the pretended discoveries of vain philoso-
phy. Modern events have not loosened a single forindation
stone of its authority, nor can any such discoveries, from their
very nature, affect it. But in asserting this confidence, it is not
necessary for the theologian to leave his own department, and
launch into the details of these extensive, fluctuating, and fasci-
nating physiciil inquiries ; nor shall I, at this time, depart from
my vocation as the expounder of God's word, to introduce into
ihis pulpit the curiosities of secular science. We have no
occasion, as defenders of that word, to compare or contest any
geologic or biologic theories. We may bo possessed neither of
the knowledge nor ability for entering that field, as I freely con-
iess concerning myself. We have no inclination to deny that
these physicists have displayed a surprising industry in their
researches ; that they have accumulated a multitude of obser-
vations ; that tiioy have speculated upon them with amazing
ingenuity, or that they have actually deduced many useful con-
clusions. My business is in another field ; that of moral evi-
dence. My effort shall be to set forth the nature and conditions
of that evidence, as bearing upon the question of the Bible's in-
spiration and authority ; and I shall endeavor to show you that
the kind of physical speculations under review, whether the}' be
more or less ingenious or probable, can never reach the level of
that higher ciuestion.

124 A CAUTION AGAINST ANTI-CHRISTIAN SCIENCE.

First, tlien : Modern physical science is not to be allowed to
boast entire immunity from error, or certainty of resiilts, any
more than the physical science of the scholastic ages. I am
well aware of the proud claim which its votaries now make-
While they join in exposing and ridiculing the pretended phy-
sics of tbe middle ages, and even glory in the vast mutations-
which the natural sciences have undergone, our present physi-
cists always assume that the Baconian Organon has given them
an immunity from mistake. Henceforth, they boast, the pro-
gi-ess of science is firm, yea, infallible, and destined to no re-
verses or contradictions, but only to continual accretions, upon.
the impregnable basis laid by the inductive logic. We are living,
say thev, not in the age of hypotheses, but of experimental de-
monstration. Those who come after us will never have any
such rubbish to remove from our systems, as the calxes, and
phlogiston, the Ptolemaic astronomy, and the baseless maxims,
such as that "Nature abhors a vacuum,'' which we have cast-
out of the old philosophy.

Xow, while rejoicing in the belief that physical science has-
made many solid advances, we are skeptical as to the realization
of tliis boast. It is overweening and unreasonable. Man is a
fallen and weak creature, impaired in all his faculties. As I ar-
gued at the outset, so I insist here : that this finite, fallen, im-
perfect reason is incompetent to invent an infallible method of
investigation, or to apply it with unfailing correctness, if it were
given to us. Partial error has marked all the results of our
forefathers' speculations ; and if we shoiild arrogate to our-
selves an entire exemption from similar mistakes, this vain con-
ceit of ourselves would be the strongest ground for prognosti-
cating our failiTre. " That which hath been, is that wdiich shall
be," Physical science will remain, in part, uncertain and
changeable, for the simple reason that it will still be the work
of men — men like the predecessors whose science we have con-
victed of uncertainty. It is true that Lord Bacon called his
method a JS'ovuvx Organum ; but he who supposes that the-
publication of this new method is to make modem science in-
fallible shows himself a sciolist indeed. Did Bacon invent a
logical faculty, or only describe a use of it ? He who supposes
that any more than the latter was done is as absurd as thongli

A CAUTION AGAINST ANTI-CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 125

■one should say that the drill-master invents legs. Nature makes
legs, and also teaches their use by instinct ; men managed to
y>alk before ever a drill-master existed, by the impulse of na-
ture's teaching. All that the drill-master does is to teach men
to walk better, and oftentimes he cannot even do that. So, our
creator gave us the faculty of reasoning, and men syllogized be-
fore ever Aristotle described the syllogistic process, and made in-
ductions before Bacon analyzed their canons. If you suppose that
ilie experimental method was never known or valued in physics
until Bacon's day, you are much mistaken. In truth, Aristotle,
who is called the " Father of Logic," analyzed its laws as really
as he did those of the syllogism. But had he not, Nature, man's
kindly teacher, would have taught him to appreciate the experi-
mental method ; and all men who have reasoned have appealed
to it, because it is one of the methods of common sense. Again,
if 30U suppose that all the speculations of the modern sciences
are conformed to Bacon's method, you are much mistaken.
Sins against its rigor and simplicity are by no means limited to
ilie da^'S of old. Men still forget that hypothesis is not proof ;
and the same motives, so natural to a fallen soul, which caused
medioeval physicists to depaii:. from the safe and rigid processes
of experimental logic — haste, lovo of hypothesis, vain-glory, pre-
judice, disgust of a proud and over'T-eening heart against the
humble, modest, and cautious rules of that method, still mislead
men's minds. The assumption that henceforth physical science
is to be trusted, and to be free from all uncertainty and change,
is therefore simply foolish.

This verdict is more solidly confirmed by facts. Indeed, how
can one doubt its general justice when he beholds the sciences
■of the day in a state of flux before his eyes ? Geologic theo-
ries change in some particulars with every decade. New facts
come to light, such as the supposed discovery of human fossils
near Amiens, in France; and of skulls in California, in older
strata than had been supposed to contain any such remains ; or
as the deep sea soundings which have lately shown that forma-
tions determined, as was asserted, to be older and newer, lie
beside each other in the ocean cotemporaneously. These dis-
coveries, inconsistent with previous hypotheses, impose to-day
a labor of modification upon geologists, and we must be excused

-l26 a caution against anti-christian science.

for oiii* lack of confidence in tlieir new structures of tlieory, with
so recent an example of error before us, and "with so manifest a
pride of opinion influencing the reception reluctantly given to
the new facts. Again : we are told that the chemistry taught
to-day is different from that which was taught ns in the colleges
and university thirty years ago — so different as to require a new
nomenclature. What reflecting man would deny that unproved
hj'pothesis enters largely into tlio current physical sciences?
Let us mention, for instance, one of the most beautiful, and one
which, in parts, has received almost a mathematical accuracy,
the science of optics. Is light, itself, a distinct, imponderable
substance, as was suggested by Newton to be possibly true?
Or is it a molecular function only, of other transparent sub-
stances? The latter supposition, we are informed, is now the
fashionable one, but has it ever received an exact and exclusive
demonstration? Does any one claim for it more than this, that
it is a supposition which 'inay satisfy all the observed facts about
light, so far as we yet know ? This is all, we presume, which any
careful physicist will assert. Yet how often do we find writers
on optics proceeding on this supposition, as though it were de-
monstrated, to other conclusions and assertions ? We are told
that the atheistic astronomer, La Place, suggested the "nebular
hypothesis " for the origin of our globe, as a possible solution ;
resting its plausibihty on the appearance of nebulous clouds cf
light among the fixed stars. But since the chief ground cf
plausibility has been removed by Lord Bosse's gigantic tele-
scope, resolving some of these nebulae into clusters of fixed
stars, do we hear our clerical cosmogonists who have adopted
this supposition prate any the less glibly al)out it ? Not a whit.
And last, as though to convince every sober mind that much of
the current physical speculation is but a romantic dreaming, en-
gendered of the surfeit of an over-prurient age, comes Darwin-
ism, and engages a considerable number of the most admired
names of physicists for this monstrous idea, that the wondrous
creature, man, "so noble in reason, so infinite in faculties, in
form and moving so express and admirable, in action so Hke an
angel, in apprehension so like a God," is but the descendant, at
long removes, of a mollusc or a tadpole. No prophet is needed
to predict that some, at least, of the current science of our day

A CAUTION AGAINST ANTI-CHKISTIAN SCIENCE. 12T

will be swept away by tlie inuovations of future physical science
itself, as "we have discredited much that preceded us.

The supposed conclusions, which seem adverse to the Scrip-
tures as understood by common Christians, are parts of an un-
stable, because an incomplete system. And I will venture the
assertion, without other faculty or acquirement than the light of
common sense, that these conclusions are far short of that per-
fect, exclusive demonstration which would be necessary to un-
seat the Bil)le from its throne of authority. A faithful scrutiny
would detect sundry yawning chasms between facts and infer-
ences.; sundry places where the proposition which, when intro-
duced first, can be called no more than a "may-be,"' is after-
wards tacitly transmuted into a " must-be." Xor is this surpris-
ing when we remember the novel and fascinating quality of the
observations, and the multiplicity of the premises given by the
fruitful variety of nature. Here is a trying lab}Tinth indeed, to
be threaded by the most patient, modest, humble, cautious,
finite reason. But are humility, modesty, and caution the char-
acteristics of modern advanced thought ? When, for instance,
some ethnologists argue that the roots of the different families
of languages indicate separate sources for the original tribes of
men ; Vs'hen Sir J. Lubbock argues, from presumed social laws,
that our civilization has raised man out of a primeval savage
state ; when Bunsen reasons that man has been more than
twenty thousand years upon our globe, from the supposed coin-
cidence of some human fossils with older deposits : do you sup-
pose that their proofs are of that character which, in a coui-t of
justice, would stand the test of adverse counsel at law in every
link, and remain so conclusive beyond all doubt as to justifv
an honest jury in taking a fellow creature's life? The inventors
themselves would doubtless recoil with a shock fi'om such a re-
sponsibility !

But the Bible, by reason of its demonstrative evidences from
the independent fields of history, criticism, miracles, fulfilled
prophecy, internal moral character, aud divine effects on human
souls, is in prior possession of the groiind of authority. We
hold the defensive. The burden of proof against us rests with
the physicists. Nothing is done to oust the Bible, until they
construct a complete, exhaustive demonstration ; not only that

128 A CAUTION AGAINST ANTI-CHKISTIAN SCIENCE.

created things may have arisen, as modern science surmises, but
that they nimst have arisen thus, and not otherwise. Let us sup-
pose that we saw a group of ingenious and well-informed mechan-
ics around a steam engine which bore no maker's label or mark.
The question is : where and by whom w^as it made ? They are
certain that it might have been made in Philadelphia ; they tell
us that they know the skilled labor, the appliances, the metals
are there for the production of just such a machine; and add-
ing certain marks which are like those communicated to such
work by the builders of that city, they are about to conclude
that this engine came thence. But now there steps forth a
sturd}', respectable Englishman, whose word no man has any
right to doubt, and says : " Yes, it might have been made in Phil-
adelphia; yet it was not, for I brought it from London." Is not
mighty London confessedly equal to the production of just
such a work ? Then here is a case in which the Englishman is
undeniably competent to testify, and if he is also found credi-
lile, the hypothetical reasons of the ingenious mechanics are
vJioUy out of place if advanced to rebiit his testimony, be-
cause the truth of what he testifies does not in the least clash
with the grounds of their surmise. He can say to them, with
]5erfect truth : " Gentlemen, I do not impugn your knowledge or
skill ; I do not dispute a word which you testify of the resources
of your city; your surmise, hypothetically, is perfectly rea-
sonable ; as far as at first appeared from the machine itself, it
inight have Ijeen viade in Philadelphia; and yet, in point of fact,
it was made in London, as I know." Thus : if there is an all-
wise, Almighty God, it must be allowed that he is fully equal to
the production of this earth and its organisms. However fair,
hypothetically, the surmise may be, that they were produced by
other agencies, if there is a credible, independent witness that,
in fact, they were made by God, the testimony is relevant, and
the supposititious inferences wholly irrelevant to rebut it.

Finally, no natviralistic arguments from observed effects to
their natural causes, however good the induction, have any force
to prove a natural origin for any structure older than authentic
human history, except upon atheistic premises. The argument
usually runs thus: we examine, for instance, the disposition
■which natural forces now make of the sediment of rivers. We

A CAUTION AGAINST ANTI-CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 129

observe that wlien it is finally extruded by the fluvial current in-
to the lake or sea where it is to rest, it is spread out horizon-
tally upon the bottom by the action of gravity, tidal waves, and
such like forces. The successive deposits of annual freshets we
find spread in strata, one upon another. Time, pressure, and
chemical reactions gradually harden the sediment into rock, en-
closing such remains of plants, trees, and living creatures as may
have fallen into it in its plastic state. The result is a bed of
stratified stones. Kence, infers the geologist, all stratified and
fossil hearing heds of stone have a sedimentary origin, or other
such like natural origin. Hence winds and waters must have
been moving on this earth long enough to account for all the
beds of such stone on the globe. Such is the argument in all
other cases.

Grant now that an infinite, all-wise, all-powerful Creator has
intervened anywhere in the past eternity, and then this argu-
ment for a natural origin of any structure, as against a super-
natural, creative origin, becomes utterly invahd the moment it
is pressed back of authentic human history. The reason is,
that the possible presence of a different cause makes it incon-
clusive. Now, I well know that this conclusion, simple and
obvious as it is, awakens a grand outcry of resistance fi'om
physicists. " What," they exclaim, " do not liko causes alwavs
produce like effects ? This principle is the yoxj fulcrum of the
lever of induction ; unsettle it, and you shake all science ; remove
it, and all her exploits are at an end." Yery true ; all these ille-
gitimate exploits in this region of a past eternity, whose solemn
romance so piques the curiosity and inflames the enthusiasm
of the human mind, in which science vainly seeks to measure
strength in the dark with an inscrutable omnipotence ; all these
-delusive exploits are ended. But within the proper sphere of
science, we leave her the fuU use of her foundation principle,
and bid her good speed in its beneficial use. And that is the
sphere of practical inquiry, within tho historical j^ast, the pre-
sent, and the finite, terrestrial future, where we can ascertain
the absence of the supernatural.

But to show how utterly out of place the princii^le is in the
past eternity, in which it must meet an Almighty First Cause,
and meet him we know not where, let me add two verj' simple

130 A CAUTION AGAINST ANTI-CHEISTIAN SCIENCE.

thoughts: "Like causes always produce hke effects?" Tes^
proYided the conditions of action remain the same. But is it
forgotten that a jJi'ojjosltio/i does not prove its converse ? The
admission, that like causes always produce like effects, is not
enough to demonstrate that all similar effects have come from
the same causes. Suppose we are comj)elled to grant the pre-
sence of another, independent, unlike, yea, omnipotent cause;
and suppose we are compelled to admit that it may have inter-
vened at any time prior to actual human history, as all except
atheists do admit? Now, in the presence of this vast, unlUce
cause, where is your valid inference, from like effects to the like
causes? It is wholly superseded. It may be asked: "Must we
then believe, of all the pre-Adamite fossils, that they are not, as
they obviously appear, organized matter; that they never were
alive ; that they were created directly by God as they lie ? The
answer is, that we have no occasion to deny their organic char-
acter, but that the proof of their pre-Adamite date is wholly
invalid, when once the possibility of creative intervention is
23roperly admitted, with its consequences. For the assumed
antiquity of all the rocks called sedimentary is an essential
member of the argument by which geologists endeavor to prove
the antiquity of these fossils. But if many of these rocks may
have been created, then the pre-Adamite date of fossils falls
also. Moreover, when we are confi'onted with an infinite Creator,
honesty must constrain us to admit, that amidst the objects em-
braced in his vast counsels, there may have been considerations,
we know not what, prompting hirn to create organisms, in num-
bers, and under conditions, very different from those which we
now term natural. After the admission of that possibility, it is
ob'\ iously of no force for us to argue, " These organisms must
have been so many ages old, supposing they were produced, and
lived, and died under the ordinary conditions knoTMi to us."
This is the very thing we are no longer entitled to suppose.

But hear the other thought. Grant me any creative interven-
tion of a God, in any form whatsoever, and at any time whatso-
ever, then it is inevitable that any individual thing, produced
by that intervention, must have presented, from its origin, every
trait of naturalness ; for it was produced by a rational Creator
for the piirpose of being — if inorganic — a part of a natural

A CAUTION AGAINST ANTI-CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 131

system, to be providentially governed through the laws of na-
ture ; or — if organic — to be, moreover, the parent of a species or
race of organisms like itself. The inference is as sure as geome-
try ; for if the first, the parent organism, had not all the proper-
ties natural to the species, how could it generate that species ?
What is the definition which science itself gives of identity of
species? It is the aggregate of those properties, precisely,
which are regularly transmitted through natural generations.
Then, the first organism, made by the Almighty to be the parent
of the species, must have been endued with all the properties
natural to the species, or to its subsequent members. Now,
then, if the argument of our physicists to a natural origin is
universally valid — that the like effects must be from the like
natiu^al causes — it is valid to prove that this first supernatural
organism was also natural. But, according to our case as agreed
on, it was not natural. And from this reasoning there is no pos-
sible escape, save in absolute atheism.

As this is a conclusion of fundamental importance, let us make
it still clearer by applying it in a fair instance. We will suppose
that within the lifetime of Seth an antediluvian physicist ap-
peared, investigating the origin of the human species precisely
upon the modern principles. He exhumed the remains of Abel
and of Adam, and submitted them to a critical examination. He
also enquired of Seth what was his belief concerning the origin
of the race. That patriarch answered, that the testimony of
God, delivered by the venerable Father of Man, Adam, perfectly
cleared up the matter; that he, his murdered brother Abel, the
unnatural murderer Cain, were all the natural progeny of a first
pair, who were themselves the supernatural, adult productions
of the Creator, without human parents. But to this simple ac-
count of the matter the man of science necessarily demurred;
for he had examined Adam's bones, and found them exhibiting
every mark of growth from a natural infancy. He had, for in-
stance, possessed himself of that very arm-bone with which, as
the unphilosophic mjih of Seth would fain teach, Adam had cul-
tivated the primeval garden. Our naturalist had sawed out a
transverse section of this bone ; he had polished it down to a
translucent film; he had poured a pencil of microscopic light
through it ; and lo, there appeared plainly, as in any other bone,,

132 A CAUTION AGAINST ANTI-CHRISTIAN SCIENCE.

tlio cellular tissue filled with that earthy salt, phosphate of lime,
which gives to all natural boues their rigidity. And then our
naturalist exclaimed, "Why, Seth, the very microscope contra-
dicts you. We have learned from human physiology that all
bony matter is thus formed by nature : first, the cellular tissue
grows, and then the infant's little frail, flexible bones acquire a
gradual solidity by the deposition of phosphate of lime in the
cells, imtil, as the child becomes a mature adult, the full charge
of this earthy substance gives the density and firmness of the
bone of the sturdy man. Now, you observe that this bone of
Adam has that density. By the unfailing maxim, that 'like
causes produce like .effects,' I know that this bone must have
been thus produced; that it was once the flexible, gelatinous
structure of the foetus, then the soft bone of the babe, and at
length, by gradual growth and deposition of the earthy salt, the
mature adult bone which we see. Hence, science must pro-
nounce your story untrue, when you say that this person's body
had no natural parentage, but was produced in a mature state
by a Ci'eator." To this beautiful induction the common sense
of Seth doubtless objected; that God told Adam, for all that, he
had made him without natural parents, the first of his kind; a
testimony which Adam's own recollection confirmed, in that,
from his earliest consciousness he had been a grown man, and
there had been no older human being ^dili him at all. Seth
doubtless protested, that this testimony he should believe in
spite of seeming science. And we may imagine that our natur-
alist grew quite impatient with his stupid obstinacy, and, as he
thrust the microscope imder his nose, exclaimed, "Why, man,
look here; seeing is believing; your own eyes will tell you
that this is natural bone, and so must have grown naturally."

Yet, still the naturalist was wrong, and Seth was right. He
could have proved it even without claiming Adam's testimony ; he
could have reminded this naturalist that, if his reasoning necessa-
rily proved that Adam had a parent, then the same reasoning, ap-
plied to a bone of Adam's father, would prove with equal certainty
that ]ie had a father in his turn, and then that there must have been
a grandfather, a great-grandfather, and so backwards forever.
But now it is a conclusion of science itself, that an infinite series
backward, without original cause outside of itself, is an impos-

A CAUTION AGAINST ANTI-CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 133

sible self-contradiction. This conclusion is of geometrical rigid-
ity, and is recognized by all modern pliilosopliers, even the most
anti-Cliristian. Tiie denial of it is, moreover, blank atheism.
Now, then, if the antediluvian naturalist cannot hold this absurd
and atheistic history of an infinite series of human generations
literally, without beginning from past eternity, he must admit
that somewhere in the past there was the first man. But his
arguments from the natural properties of that first man's remains
must inevitably be false in that case. Well, then, he might just
as well admit that the argument from Adam's bone was worthless
in his case. Seth's testimony is found, after all, strictly compe-
tent to the question ; and, if his character is seen to be trust-
worthy, perfectly decisive of it. Seth could, moreover, have
supported his own credibility by most weighty exj)erimental
facts : such as the exceeding fewness, in his day, of those very
bones and other remains of dead human generations ; the scan-
tiness of the members of the human family, compared with their
evidently prolific powers, and the obvious marks of recency at-
taching to the whole condition of the race.

Now I claim that my instance is fair ; the parallel defect will
appear in every attempt of modern science to push the Creator's
intervention back of the earliest human history by such induc-
tive reasoning. And I ask, with emphasis, if men are not in fact
reaching after atheism; if their real design is not to push God
clean out of past eternity, why this craving to show his last in-
tervention as Creator so remote? "Wliy are they so eager ta
shove God back six millions of years from their own time rather
than six thousand ? Is it that " they do not like to retain God
in their knowledge " ? It is not for me to make that charge. But
have I not demonstrated that the validity of their scientific logic,
in reality, gains nothing by this regressus f

Once more : let men explicitly r3linquish the horrible posi-
tion of atheism ; and they must admit, somewhere in the past,
the working of a Being of '•' eternal power and Godhead." And
that admission contains another: that this eternal, sovereign
Maker was, of coxwse, prompted hj some ratwmil design in mak-
ing what he then chose to make. That is, in the language of
natural theology, God must have some filial causes for what he
does, of some sort or other. While we may not audaciously

134 A CAUTION AGAINST ANTI-CHEISTIAN SCIENCE.

speculate as to wliat tliey were, yet so much is obvious, that in
this vast and inscrutable counsel of the Maker's purpose, amidst
all the wide designs of the Infinite Eeason, the material is in-
tended to subserve the spiritual. As the body is for the mind,
and not the mind for the body, so the whole world discloses
thus much of its Maker's purpose, that the irrational creation is
for the sake of the rational. Shall philosophers be the men to
impugn this? They cannot. All nature would cry shame on
them for doing so. For what is their prefen'ed glory over the
rest of us common men ? It is the superior use of their reason.

Now God is manifestly so infinite in wisdom and power, that
any creative exploit to which his own final causes might prompt
him is as easy to him as any smaller one. Suppose that he
may have had rational ends to gain from the production of a
world ah'eady organized and equipped for the home of a reason-
able race of his servants. Then it was no more fatiguing or in-
convenient to him to produce such a world six thousand years
ago, in all its completeness, than to produce, six millions of
years ago, simply a nebulous, incandescent mass of vapor, out of
^vhich to grow a world. But, it will be said, is not that state-
ment purely hypothetical ? I reply, yes ; in advance of revealed
testimony, it is. But its legitimate use is to show that there is a
competetit and relevant case here fur just such testimony. Now,
then, if such a witness appears, and his credibility has sufficient
moral supports, his testimony is good. And this "siew of the
matter is as really the most scientific as it is the most Christian.

Hence, brethren, I hold that there is, and there can be, no
projDer collision between the most explicit and authoritative
theistic testimony and sound natural science. They cannot
clash, because wherever, in travelling backwards, the domain of
creative Omnipotence is met, there true natural science stops.
Let us hold this ground, and we have no need to debate any
particular hypothesis as to the origin of organism, or to choose
this rather than that. We have no call to leave the sphere of
morals and theology to plunge into the secular disputes of
anatomists or mineralogists. Neither ha^-e we any need to force
a strained exegesis upon God's record of his own omnipotence
in order to conciliate uncei*tain and fluctuating human sciences.

The best antidote, mv hearers, for all this naturalistic unbe-

A CAUTION AGAINST ANTI-CHKISTIAN SCIENCE. 135

lief is to remember jour owu stake iu the truth of redemption ;
and the best remedy for the soul infected is conviction of siu.
"Be^N'are lest any man despoil you through a vain, deceitful
23hilosophy." Of what will they despoil you? Of a divine re-
demption, and a Saviour in whom dwell the divine wisdom,
power, love, and truth, iu all their fulness ; of deliverance from
sin and guilt ; of immortality ; of hope. Let naturalism prove
aU that unbeUef claims, and what have you? This blessed
Bible, the only book which ever told perishing man of an ade-
quate salvation, is discredited ; God, with his providence and
grace, is banished out of 3-our existence. But is consciousness
discredited, which assures you that yoii are a spiritual and re-
sponsible being? Is sin proved a fancy and death a myth?
Alas, no. These imperative needs of the soul still remain, and
crush jou as before ; but there is no deliverer. In place of a
personal God iu Christ, Father, Friend, Redeemer, to whom
you can cry in prayer, ou whom you may lean in your anguish,
who is able and willing to heal depravity and wash you from
.guilt, who is suited to be your poi-tioa in a blessed immortahty,
you are left face to face "s^dth this eternal nature, impersonal,
j-easonless, heartless. Her evolutions are but the movements
of an infinite machine, revolving by the letw of a mechanical
necessity, and between her Tipper and nether millstones the
corn is this multitude of human hearts, instinct with Hfe, and
-hope, and fear, and sensibihty, palpitating, wi'ithing, and bleed-
ing forever under the remorseless grind. Tes, for aught you
know, forever ! for this dreary philosophy cannot even give you
the poor assurance of annihilation. Even though it should
banish God fi'om your creed, it cannot banish the anticipations
of immortality from your spirit. Naturalism is a virtual atheism,
and atheism is despair. Thus saith the apostle : " They who are
" without God in the world " are " without hope." (Eph. ii. 12.)
Toung man, does it seem to you an aUuring thought, when ap-
petite entices or pride inflates, that this false science may re-
lease you from the stern restraints of God's revealed law ? Oh !
beware, lest it despoil you thus of hope and immortahty. Ee-
member those immovable realities, sin, guilt, accountability,
which no vain, deceitful philosophy \\-ill be able to hide in the
hour of yoiu' extremity. Look at these great facts in that light

136 A CAUTION AGAINST ANTI-CHRISTIAN SCIENCE.

iu wliicli, as you well know, deatli, "that most wise, eloquent,
and miglitj teaclier," will place them. How poor and mean will
all these pretentious sophisms appear in that hour ?

Hence, I am not afraid to predict an assured final triumph
for the Bible in this warfare. In the end, the spiritual forces
of man's natui'e must always conquer, as they always have con-
quered. Look back, proud Natui-alist, upon history ; your form,
and all other forms of skepticism, have been unable to hold theu'
ground, even against the poor fragments and shreds of divine
truth which met you in Poh-theism, in Mohammedanism, in
Popery. Man, however blinded, will believe in his spmtual
destiny in spite of you. Let proud Naturalism advance, then,
and seek its vain weapons gi'oping amidst pre-Adamite strata
and rotten fossils. The humble heralds of our Lord Christ will
lay their hands upon the heartstrings of living, immortal man,
and fmd there always the forces to overwhelm unbelief with de-
feat. Do men say their propositions are only of things spirit-
ual? Aye, but spiritual truths are more stable than all their
primitive granite. These imperishable truths rest on the testi-
mony of consciousness, a faculty more valid than sense and ex-
perience : because, only by admitting its certainty can any per-
ception or experience of the senses claim vaUdity.

Centuries hence, if man shall continue in his present state so
long, when these cuiTent theories of unbehef shall have been
consigned, by a truer secular science, to that limhus where the
Ptolemaic astronomy, alchemy and judicial astrology, lie con-
temned, the servants of the cross "u-ill be -u-inning larger, and jei
larger, ^'ictories for Christ, with the same old doctrines preached
by Isaiah, by St. Paul, by Augustine by Knox by Davies.

THE CAUnO.\ AGAIXST AM-CHRISTIAX SCIENCE
CRITICISED BY M. WOODROW/

IN Maj, 1869, I addressed a memorial on theological edu-
cation, not to tlie General Assembly, but to the Com-
mittee on Theological Seminaries. Called by the church and
Assembly to this work almost from my youth, I had devoted
sixteen of my best years to their service, as a teacher in one of
the Assembly's schools of divinity. I was conscious that I had
studied this great interest, and engaged in this labor, with aU
the zeal and attention of which my feeble powers were capable.
It was obvious that our system of seminary instruction was stiU,
notwithstanding its valuable fruits, in several respects experi-
mental. It had been borrowed, by Drs. A. Alexander and J. H.
Eice, mainly from Andover, then the only institution of this pre-
cise nature in America, for Princeton and Union Seminaries.
But Andover was Congregational — we are Presbyterians. I saw
that there was danger lest features borrowed by these beloved
fathers provisionally should, by unquestioned usage, harden into
fixed precedents, which they never desired, when, perhaps, time
might show that these features were unsuited, or not best suited,
to our poKcy and principles. As our church was then, in God's
j^rovidence, passing anew through a formative state, it seemed
the right time to discuss these points of seminary management,
"^'ho should evoke that discussion, if not the men to whom the
church has entrusted the business ? I, though not an old man,
was very nearly the oldest teacher in divinity in the service of
the church. Now, I might have sought moral support for my
views by manoeuvring to get come faculty, or colleague, or my
Presbytery, or my Synod, or a majority thereof, to "father"

'Appeared in the Sontliern Presbyterian Revieic, for October, 1873, in answer
to a criticism by Eev. James Woodrow, D. D., on tlie preceding article.

137

1 38 THE CAUTION AGAINST ANTI-CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

tliem, in the form of an "overture" to the Assembly. But, as I
desired to speak out mv ■n-hole mind respectfully, yet honestly,
I preferred to have my views go before the Assembly unsup-
ported by factitious props, and let them receive only that assent
to "U'liich their intrinsic merit might entitle them.

The memorial was not read in the Assembly of 1869, but was
referred to the faculties and directors of Columbia and Union
Seminaries, going fii'st to the former. The authorities at Co-
lumbia disapproved all my views. The papers were then mislaid
for a time among the officers and committeemen of the Assemblv:
1 know not how. Finally, another committee of the Assembly
reported, without ever having met as a committee, or having seen
my memorial, advising that the subject be finally dropped, on
the single ground that so decided a dissent of one seminary
would make it improper to attempt any improvements, whether
valuable or not. Thus the paper was consigned to "the tomb of
all the Capulets;" and I was refused a hearing, when neither
church nor any of the Assemblies knew anything whatever of my
recommendations, save from the version of my opponents. Had
I demanded the privilege of dictating my views, this reception
would have been just. But the humblest servant expects a liear-
ing, when he comes to the most imperious master, in the spii'it
of humble zeal and fidelity, to inform that master of the interests
of ]tis 23roperty entrusted to the servant's care. That mere hear-
ing was what I asked for ; and only for my master's good, not my
own ; for the only result to me, of the adoption of my views, would
have been increase of toil and responsibility ; but even a hearing
has been refused me.

This, however, is a digression. One of the points made in
this forgotten memorial was an objection to the introduction of
chairs of natural science into our seminaides. These sciences,
and especially geology, have been so largely pei'verted to the in-
terests of unbelief, that sundry friends of the Bible, in their un-
easiness, came to think that our seminaries should be provided
with chairs to teach these sciences, in their relation to inspira-
tion, to all the pastors of the church. I recognized the danger,
but dissented from this mode of meeting it, on three grounds,
which still seem to me perfectly conclusive. One was, that the
amount of instruction which could be thus given on these intri-

CRITICISED BY DR. \YOODROW. 139

<>ate and extensive branches of knowledge in connection with the
arduous studies of a three years' course iu divinity, %vould usually
prove inadequate to the end proposed ; whence I conclude that
the defence of inspiration against the perversions of these sciences
would be better left to learned Christian laymen, and to those
pastors and teachers whose exceptional talents and opportunities
fitted them for going thoroughly into such studies. My second
point was, that the study of modern geology, especially, is shown
by experience to be seductive, and to have a tendency towards
naturalistic and anti-Christian opinions. Some, of course, must
master these matters, notwithstanding any dangerous tendencies ;
but it would be more discreet i)ot to place the Christian men es-
pecially devoted to these seductive pursuits in the very schools
where our pastors are all taught, and not to arm them with the
church's own power and authority for teaching an uninspired
and fallible branch of knowledge ex catliedra to all our pastors;
because, should that happen among us, at some distant day,
-which has often happened to others, it would be far more detri-
mental to have the defection in a citadel of the church than
iu an outpost. To show that I was not insinuating any doubt of
any living man, I added : " Tlie undoubted soundness of all our
l)resent teachers and clergy, and their unfeigned reverence for in-
spiration, now bhnd ns to the ulterior tendency of such attempts.
It may be two or three generations before the evil comes to a cli-
max." My third argument was the most conclusive of all. It
was grounded in the fact that our church and all its ecclesiasti-
cal po^vers are founded upon a doctrinal covenant — our Confes-
sion and Catechisms. Hence, I argued, the church cannot, by
ecclesiastical power, teach her presbyters ex cathedra in her sem-
inaries— which, if they have any right to exist at all, are ecclesi-
astical institutions — a set of opinions which are clear outside of
our doctrinal covenants. And this was the more conclusive be-
cause it was morally certain that any theory of adjustment
between geology and Moses, which would be taught by any
modern geologist, would contradict the express terms of our
doctrinal covenants as they now stand. For each of these
schemes of adjustment postulates the existence of a pre-Ad-
amite earth and living creatures ; but our Confession, Chap. lY.
Sec. 1, expressly asserts the contrary. Now, this being the case,

140 THE CAUTION AGAINST ANTI-CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

and some of our ministers holding one, and others holding a con-
trary scheme oi adjustment, and others, again, being, like myself,
committed to none, it must follow that, sooner or later, the at-
tempt to inculcate one of these schemes by ecclesiastical author-
ity must lead to strife among ourselves. How soon has this
been verified! Dr. "Woodrow's groundless apprehension that I
was seeking to inculcate a different scheme from his, has already
verified it! Now, we do not regard our Confession as infallible;
bvit it is our doctrinal covenant, and we are surely right, there-
fore, in expecting, at least, thus much, that those who believe
they have detected positive error in it, ought candidly to move
the church to agree together upon the correction of that error ;
and they are the proper persons to show how to correct it, if
they can.

But meantime, Judge Perkins had endowed a chair of " Nat-
ural Science in connection with Revealed Eeligion " in Columbia
Seminary, and Dr. Woodrow was its incumbent. Is this crit-
ique his retaliation for my presuming to exercise my right of
dissent? I carefully remove all provocation, by making, as I
have recited, a most express and honorable exception in favor
of him and all his colleagues and puj^ils. It will appear in the
sequel as though he were bent upon excepting himself from
the benefit of my exception, and verifying in his own case the
caution which I was too courteous to appl}' to him.

The first criticism which I notice is, the charge that I disal-
low and reject all physical science whatever ; and that I do it
upon the implied ground that revelation can only be defended
by disallowing it all ; thus virtually betraying the cause of the
Bible with all intelligent men. This misconception of my aim
will be so astonishing to all impartial readers, that perhaps they
will be slow to believe Dr. "SYoodrow has really fallen into it.
Hence I quote a few of his own words. Itevieiv, p. 328 : "Dr.
Dabney has been keeping u-p for a number of years an unremit-
tino- warfare against j)hysical science." There must be a good
many remissions when Dr. W.'s zeal can find but three blows
in seven years. Page 333: "Dr. D. endeavors to excite hos-
tility against physical science," etc. Page 335 : " Having taught
.... that physical science is vain and deceitful philosophy,"
etc. Page 337: "If he had confined himself to saying that

CRITICISED BY DR. WOODROW. 141

tlie tendency of mueli of so-called modern science is skeptical,
lie mio-lit easily liaye substantiated this assertion. But ....
lie maintains no such partial proposition," etc.

But this is precisely the proposition which I do maintain;
haying stated and defined it precisely thus in my own words. I
presume that Dr. Woodrow is the only reader who has so mis-
conceived me. My last and chief pubhcation, the sermon in
Lynchburg, is entitled, "A Caution against Anti- Christian Sci-
ence." Why may I not be credited as understanding and mean-
ing what I said? Dr. Woodrow exclaims, as he cites from my
own words my respectful appeal to the physical science of Drs.
Bachman and Cabell, or to the refutation of the eyolution hy-
pothesis of Darwin, etc., by Agassiz and Lyell, or to the proof
of actual, new creations of genera by fossil-geology : " Is Saul
among the prophets?" Why may ii not be supposed that I was
not an ignoramus, and so was consistent with mj^self, and knew
what I was saying ? The anti-Christian science which I disal-
low Avas here expressly separated from this sound physical sci-
ence. But again : In the introduction of the sermon I hasten to
separate and define the thing I attack. On the second page I tell
my readers that it is the "prevalent, yain," physical philosophy.
Kow every one knows that it is the materialistic philosophy of
Lamarck, Chambers ( Vestiges), Darwin, Hooker, Huxley,
Tyndall, Herbert Spencer, Biichner, which is now the " preya-
lent" one. That is, these and their followers, like the frogs in
the fable, who made more fuss in the meadow than the whole
herd of good bullocks, are notoriously "prevalent" upon the
surface of the current literature. It is these whom people called
" intelligent" now usually read in the journals of the day. They
hear of Darwin and his friends a thousand times, and do not
hear of Dr. Woodrow's sound and safe science at all. I j^re-
sume that there was not a gentleman i". my audience in Lynch-
burg who did not see that I opposed these materialistic physi-
cists, and them alone. I further defined the thing I opposed as
that which aflects "positivism;" which attempts to construct a
" sensualistic " psychology ; which refers everything, as effects,
to the laws of material nature and of animal life. One would
think that the materialistic school of Darwin, Huxley, etal., was
in these words defined beyond possibility of mistake to the well-

142 THE CAUTION AGAINST ANTI-CHEISTIAN SCIENCE

informed liearer. All sucli would, moreover, clearly understand
me as meaning these, because they knew that I knew it was pre-
cisely this school of physicists which was making nearly all the
noise and trouble in the popular literature of the day, described
by me in subsequent passages of the sermon.

But Dr. "Woodrow, rather than give me the benefit of my own
definition of my ovm object, on page 335 of his Jtevie^v, launches
out into the most ams-zing misunderstanding and contradictions.
Indeed, the passage is to me unintelligible, except that his as-
tounding denial of the attempt made by the followers of Hume,
and of Auguste Comte, to give a " sensualistic " explanation of
the "mind's philosophy," betrays the fact that he has wholly
failed to apprehend what I was speaking of. Had I learned
manners in the school of Dr. Woodrow, I should here be war-
ranted in retorting some of his very polite language on pages
368 to 370, and "prove that he is acquainted neither with the
method nor the ends of" tnental "science;" that he "has re-
fused to learn " about the history of psychology " what boys in
college can understand," or that he " is ignorant of the difference
between true science " of mind " and the errors uttered in its
name," etc., etc. But instead of doing so, I shall simply beg
Dr. Woodrow's attention to some very familiar facts in the his-
tory of philosophy, which I trust will enable him to see my
meaning. Be it known then, that especially since the days of
Hartley in England, and Condillac in France, there have been
in those countries, schools of philosophers, whose main charac-
teristic is that they ascribe to the human mind no original
functions save those of sensibility and sense-perception. They
deny all a ])riori powers to the reason, and disbelieve the exist-
ence, in our thinking, of any really primitive judgments of rea-
son. They teach that all logical principles are empirical. They
hold in its sweeping and absolute sense the old scholastic max-
im, " J^ihilin intellect a quod non prius hi sensu." The consis-
tent result of so false an analysis was foreseen to be materiahsm ;
and so it resulted. Now, the term employed to denote this
school of psychology, from the days of the great and happy re-
action under Royer Collard and others in Paris, and Emmanuel
Kant in Konigsburg, was sensrialistic, sometimes spelled by the
Eno-lish philosoiphers, as Morell, sensatiojialistic ; and the name

CKITICISED BY DR. AVOODEOW. 1-1^ '

is appropriate, because the scliool sought to fiud all the sources
of cognitiou in the se/tses. This common error characterized the
deadly philosophy of Hume, the scheme of Augusta Comte,
termed by himself positivism, and the somewhat diverse systems
of Buckle, John Stuart Mill, and of Darwin and Huxley ; \A\o,
while disclaiming positivism in that they do not adopt some of
Comte's crotchets, yet hold this main error, and consequently
reach, more or less fully, the result, blank materialism. One of
the worst characteristics of the type of physical science now sa
current through the writings of these men, is the union of this
" sensualistic " psychology with their physical speculations,
whence there results almost inevitably a practical atheism, or at
least a rank infidelity. I hope that Dr. "Woodrow is now re-
lieved, and begins to see what was the "anti-Christian science"
which I opposed in my sermon and other writings.

I will now add, that at the end of last April, two months be-
fore the publication of Dr. Woodrow, he did me the honor to
write me very courteously, at the prompting of a good man, a
friend of peace, notifying me of his intended critique. I -RTote
him, the first of May, a polite and candid reply, in which oc-
curred the following sentences :

"Eev. a::d Deas Sik: Tour courtesy in advertising me of your article de-
serves a thankful acknowledgment. I beg leave to tax your kindness with a few
remarks before you finally commit j-our JIS. to the press. The few words which,
passed between ns in Richmond showed me that I had not been so fortunate as to
convey the real extent and meaning of my views to you. This misconception I
will make one more effort to remove, in order to save you and the public from dis-
cussions aside from the real point

' ' I conceive that there is but one single jjoint between you and me, which is
either worthy or capable of being made a subject of scientific discussion. It is
this: I hold that to those tcho honestly admit a Creator anywhere in the pa^t, the a
posteriori argument from, naturalness of properties to a natural — as opposed to a
creative or supernatural —or^'^^?^ of the structures examined, can xo longer be rxi-
VERSAiLT VALID. That is, really, the only point I care for. Now let me appeal to
your candor to disencumber it of misapprehensions and supposed monstrous corol-
laries, and where is the mighty mischief ?

"But, you may say. Dr. Dabney is understood as holding the above in such
a sense as to involve the assumption that all save the ^pileistocene ' fossils are shams ;
that is, that the older fossil remains of animal life never were alive, but that God,
in creating the world, created them just as they are, probably for the purpose of
'humbugging ' the geologists. Now I have never said nor implied any such thing,
and do not believe it. Search and see. You may return to the charge with this
inferential argument ; that the doctrine means this, or else it has no point to it. It

144 THE CAUTION AGAINST ANTI-CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

does not mean it in my bands, and I -will show you -what point I think it has. Let
that ugly bugaboo, I pray you, be laid.

" Again, you will find, if you wiU search my notes and sermon, that I have not
committed myself for or against any hypothesis held by truly devout, Christian
geologists. I have not said that I rejected, or that I adopted, the older scheme of
a pre-AJamite earth, as held by Drs. Chalmers, Hodge, Hitchcock, etc, I have
not committed myself for or against the hypotheses of Cardinal Wiseman, and Dr.
Gerald MoUoy of ilayuooth. No man can quote me as for or against the ' unif orm-
itariau' scheme of Sir Charles Lyell as compared with the opposite scheme of
Hugh Miller. As to the other propositions advanced in my notes and sermon, I
presume they can hardly be made the subjects of scientific debate between us,
even if of difference. We shall hardly dispute whether sham-science, disparaging
Moses, is, or is not, wholesome reading for the children of the church. We shall
hardly differ about the propriety of carrying that solemn conscience into physical
specidation which sinners usually feel when they come to die. It can hardly be
made a point for scientific inquiry, whether your larger or my smaller admiration
for the fascinating art of the mineralogist is the more just.

'' The only real point which remauis, then, is my humble attempt to fix the
'metes and bounds' of physical aj^osteriori reasonings when they inosculate with
the divine science. Obviously, atheistic physicists wholly neglect these metes
and bounds. Obviously again, many theistic physicists— as Hitchcock, Reli(jioii
of Geology — dazzled by the far.cination of facts and speculations, are overlooking
these metes and bounds. Now, that inquiry may proceed ia a healthy way, and
the ground be prepared for safe hypothesis, it is all-important that a first principle
be settled here. I offer my humble mite, by proving that, to the theistic reasoner —
I hcive no debate herewith atheists — the proposition cannot liold universally true
that an analogous naturalness of properties in a structure proves an analogous
natural origin. I do not care to put it in any stronger form than the above.

" But when cleared of misconceptions, this proposition, to the theist, becomes
irresistible. ' Geologists ' — meaning of course the ones defined in the previous para-
graph—refuse all limitations of analogical, a posteriori arguments, claiming that
'hke causes always produce like effects,' which, say they, is the A-ery corner-stone
of all inductive science. But the real proposition they employ is the converse of
this, viz.: 'Like effects always indicate like causes. ' Now, first, must I repeat the
trite rule of logic, That the converse of a true proposition is not necessarily true ?
Secondly, The theist has expressly admitted another cause, namely, an infinite, per-
sonal Creator, confessedly competent to any effect he may choose to create. Hence,
the theist is compelled to allow that this converse will not hold universally here.
Thirdly, A wise creator, creating a structure to be the subject of natural laws, will
of course create it with traits of naturalness. Hence, whenever the mineralogist
meets with one of these created structui-es, he must be ])repared to find in it every
trait of naturalness, like other structures of the clas^ which are originated naturally.
Fourthly, To the theist this argument is perfect, when api^lied to all vital organisms.
The first of the species must have received from the supernatural, creative hand
every trait of naturalness, else it could not have fuliilled the end for which it was
made, viz. , to be the parent of a species, to transmit to subsequent generations of
organisms the specific nature. And, fifthly and lastly. To deny this would compel
us still to assign a natural parent, before the first created parent, of each species of
generated organism : which would involve us in a multitude of infinite series, with-
out causes outside of themselves. But this notion science herself repudiates as a
self-contradictory absurdity etc.

CKITICISED BY DR. WOODROW. 145

" Wliat use is to be made of this conclusion, if acTmitted? First, to save us
:from being betrayed into some theory of cosmogony virtually atheistic. Secondly,
to make you and me, those who love geology and those who are jealous of it,
modest in constructing hypotheses; to remind us, when examining the thingp
which disclose ' eternal power and Godhead,' how possibly we may have gotten into
contact with the immediate Hand who 'giveth no account to any man of his mat-
ters. ' Very faithfully yours, K. L. Dajbney. "

As to my argument in this letter, on the main point we shall
see anon. Now, of course it was impossible for me to foresee
the amazing misapprehensions into which Dr. Woodrow had
fallen. But had I been prophet enough to foresee them, I could
hardly have chosen terms more exactly adapted to remove them,
and to demonstrate that I did not attack all physical science ;
that I did not recommend universal skepticism of all but mathe-
matics and the Bible ; that I did not teach God had created a
lie in putting fossils into the rocks, etc. But probably it did
not avail to change one word ; Dr. Woodrow was not to be thus
balked of the pleasure of printing a slashing criticism of one
'vAio had given no provocation to him. Leaving it to the reader
to characterize this proceeding, I would only ask if I was not
entitled to the benefit of my own exposition with the public?
May I not claim the poor rtght, never denied even to the in-
dicted felon, of speaking my own speech and defining my own
defence ? Had Dr. Woodrow deemed my statements in my let-
ter inconsistent with those in my sermon, he might at least have
given me the benefit of a change towards what he considers the
better mind.

I shall be reminded that the misconception of my scope was
justified by such language from me as this : " The tendencies of
geologists are atheistic." " These sciences are arraj^ed in all
their phases on the side of skepticism," etc. These statements
are all true, and consistent with my high respect for all true
physical sciences. All of them are arrayed by some of their
professed teachers, on the side of skepticism. Or, as I defined
my meaning in the sermon, these sciences of geology, natural
history, and ethnology, now exciting so much popular atten-
tion, " always have some tendency to become anti-theologi-
cal." I believe this to be true. They always have this ten-
dency, but not always this effect. A tendency is a partial drift
towards a certain result. It may exist, and yet in a multitude

Vol. III.— 10.

146 THE CAUTION AGAINST ANTI-CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

of cases it may liave no effect, because countervailed by oppos-
ing tendencies ; or better still, opposing causes. Thus it ap-
pears clearly to be tlie doctrine of Scripture, tliat the possession
of wealth always has, with frail man, a tendency towards car-
nality ; yet all rich Christians are not carnal. Witness Abra-
ham, the father of the faithful, j-et a mighty man of riches ; and
the prince of Uz, Job. Hence a good man may, for valid rea-
sons, o-^Ti riches, and may even seek riches ; yet, until he is
perfectly sanctified, their pursuit is doubtless attended with a
certain element of spiritual danger. If he does his duty in
prayer and watchfulness, this danger will be counterpoised and
he will remain safe. Now it is precisely in this sense that I
hold these studies always to have some tendency to become anti-
theological. Yet it may be even a duty to pursue them, prayer-
fully and watchfully ; and many good men, Uke Dr. Woodrow,
may thus escape their drift towards rationalism, though, like
Abraham, acquiring great store of these scientific riches.

I assigned, as I thought very perspicuously, the reasons of
this tendency. First : it is both the business and the boast of
physical science to resolve as many effects as possible into their
second causes. Repeated and fascinating successes in these
solutions gradually amount to a temptation to the mind to look
less to the great First Cause. The experience of thousands,
who were not watchful and prayerful, has proved this. Again ;
geology and its kindred pm'suits have this peculiarity, that they
lead inquiry full towards the great question of the Anyr^, the
fountain head of beings. Now let a mind already intoxicated
by its success in finding the second causes for a multitude of
phenomena which are to meaner minds inexplicable, and in ad-
dition, secretly swa^-ed by that native hostility which the Scrip-
ture declares lurks in all unconverted men, " not hking to re-
tain God in their knowledge," let such a mind push its inqui-
ries up to this question of the beginning of beings, there will
be very surely some anti-theological tendency developed in him.
Is it asked why all other human sciences, as law, chemistry,
agriculture, are not chargeable with the same tendency ? The
answer is : because they do not come so much into competition
with the theistic solution of the question of the origin of things.
Is it denied that geology does this ; and are we told that Dr.

CRITICISED BY DR. WOODROW. 1-17

Dabney lias betrayed his scientific ignorance by supposing that
geology claims to be a cosmogony ? Well, we know very well
that Sir Charles Lyell, in the ver}^ outset of his Principles of
Geology, (London, 1850), has denied that geology interferes
with questions of cosmogony. And we know equally well, that
if this be true of his geology, it is not true of geology generally,
as currently obtruded on the reading public in our day. I
thought that " cosmogony " meant the genesis of the cosmos ;
that cosmos is distinguished from chaos. So, when modern
geology, in anti-theological hands — which are the hands which
rather monopolize geology now in our periodicals, viz., Huxle}-,
Hooker, Tyndall, Biichner, et al. — undertakes to account for the
origin of existing structures, it is at least virtually undertaking
to teach a cosjnogony. In this judgment I presume all men of
common sense concur with me. " Geology ought not to assume
to be a cosmogony ? " Very true ; and I presume Dr. Wood-
row's does not. But unfortunately, in this case the frogs out-
sound the good, strong bullocks. It is the assuming, anti-the-
istic, cosmogonic geology of which the Christian world chiefly
hears ; and hence viy protest.

On page 352 Dr. Woodrow says : " All speculations as to the
origin of forces and agents operating in nature arc incompetent
to natural science. It examines how these operate, what effects
they produce ; but in answer to the questions, is there a per-
sonal, spiritual God, who created these forces ? or did they
originate in blind necessity ? or are they eternal ? natural
science is silent ^

That is to say, Dr. AVoodrow's natural science is silent. But
is Drs. Darwin's and Huxley's natural science silent about them ?
Notoriously, it is not. When these men endeavor to account for
existing beings by "natural selection," a physical law as the
"original force" and "operating agent;" when inany recent
wiiters endeavor to use the modern doctrine of the " correlation
of forces" for the purpose of identifying God's power with
force, their natural science does not behave at all as Dr. Wood-
row's belicijves. And this is our quarrel irith iheni. Nor can we
assent fully to Dr. Woodrovv^'s view, that true natural science
"is silent" about all these questions. She ought no.t to be
silent. Her duty is to evolve as the crown a:id glory of all her

148 THE CAUTION AGAINST ANTI-CHEISTIAX SCIENCE

coBclusious, the natural, theological argument for the being, wis-
dom and goodness of a personal God. Such was the natural
science of Lord Bacon, of Sir Isaac Newton, of Commodore
Matthew Maurj.

It is urged, I should not have srid these physical sciences
have an anti-theistic tendency, because, where men have per-
verted them to unbelief, the evil "tendency was in the student,
and not in the study." This, I reply, is a half truth. The evil
tendency is in the student and the study ; I have shown that the
study itself has its elements of danger. But I might grant that
it is in the student, rather than in the study ; and still assert the
generality of this lurking tendency. For, the quahty in the stu-
dent, which constitutes the tendency, is, alas! inborn, and uni-
versal among the unrenewed, namely, alienation from God — a
" not liking to retain him in their knowdedge" — a secret desire to
have him afar off.

And now, when we turn to current facts, do they not sorrow-
fully substantiate my charge against these perverted sciences ?
Every Christian journal teems with lamentations over the wide
and rapid spread of unbelief flowing from this source. Such
men as Dr. McCosh fly to arms against it. Such men as Dr.
^^oodi'ow have so profound an impression of the power and au-
dacity of the enemy as to be impelled to wage the warfare con-
tinuously, even in an inappropriate arena. It is notorious that
these physical speculations have become, in our day, the com-
mon, yea, almost the sole resources of skepticism. We have in-
fidel lawyers and physicians ; but they are infidels, not because
of their studies in jurisprudence, therapeutics or anatomy ; but
because they have turned aside to dabble in geology and its con-
nections.

But we see stronger, though less multiplied, instances of this
tendency, in the cases where it sways devout believers to posi-
tions inconsistent with their own faith. Thus, Hugh Miller Avas
a good Presbyterian, the representative and organ of the Scotch
Free Church, yet he was misled b}^ geology' to adopt a theory
of exposition for the first chapter of Genesis which Pr. Wood-
row strongly disapproves. And Dr. Woodrow, though " believ-
ing firmly in every word of the Bible as inspired by the Holy
Ghost," is betrayed in this critique, by the same seductive "ten-.

CBITICISED BY DR. WOODROW. 149

dency," into two positions inconsistent witli liis sovinci faitli.
This will appear in the sequel. In this connection a remark
should also be made upon the attempt to veil the prevalence of
unbelief in America, by condemning my reference to the re-
ported sentiments of many members of the Indianapolis meeting
of 1870. He thinks it quite slanderous in me to allude to the pub-
lished testimony of an eye-witness, without having required that
person to put these slandered members through a very full and
heart-searching catechism as to all their thoughts and doings,
and the motives of them. Somehow, I find my conscience very
obtuse upon this point. Obviously, I only gave the published
testimony of this reporter for what it was worth. That I was
clearly entitled to do so seems very plain from this fact: that
he, and I knov/ not how many other prints, had already given
it to the 2)iMic. He had made it the public's; he had made it
mine, as an humble member of the public, to use it for
what it might be worth. The currency given to the state-
ment, by its mention in my poor little sermon, was but as a
bucket to that ocean of publicity into which it had already
flowed through the mighty Northern press.

The second point requiring correction in Dr. Woodrow's
critique is the equalh' surprising statement, that I inculcate
universal skepticism in every branch except the Bible and
mathematics. Here, again, his mistake is so surprising that it
is necessary to state it in his own words. Page 330, of Iievieir :
"He" (Dr. D.) ^' recommend s skeptic ism as to the results of the
application of our God-given reason to the works of God'fi
hands." Page 331, I am represented as teaching that " we
must regard ourselves as incajpahle of arrivijuj at a knowledge
of truth,'' and, farther on, "that we can never hecome certain of
anything in geology or other branches of natural science." I
am represented, on page 332, as claiming "that our reason coidd.
not form one correct judgment on any subject without divine
guidance." On page 338, I am represented as attempting to
show that "physical science never can reach undoubted truth."
On page 337, I am made to teach "that the systematic study of
God's works always tends to make us disbelieve his Word,"
whereas the very point of my caution is, that the sort of pre-
tended study of God's works which makes so many people dis-

150 THE CAUTION AGAINST ANTI-CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

believe liis Word is n(jt systematic. That is, it is not conducted
on a just system.

There is, then, no mistake in my charging this misrepresenta-
tion, that the reA^ewer really does impute to me a sweeping
disbelief of all that physical science teaches, except in the
"exact sciences." And neither is there, with the attentive
reader, any mistake in the verdict that this charge is a sheer
blunder. The very passage quoted to prove the charge from
my sermon disproves it in express words. I state that "the
human inind, as well as heart, is impaired by the fall," not de-
stroyed. I do not go any farther, certainly, than our Confes-
sion. Why did not Dr. Woodrow assail and ridicule that ?
Again: "The Christian need never expect that uninspired sci-
ence will be p)'^^^9^<^ (^f uncertainty and error ^'' etc. The meta-
phor is taken from therapeutics, in which a " purge " is given
wdth the aim of bringing away certain morbific elements bear-
ing a very small ratio to the body piu-ged. And still more defi-
nitely, I say: "Even if the organon were absolute, pure truth,
its appHcation by fallen minds must always insure in the results
viore or less of error^'' etc. On page 8 of Sermon, I add, speak-
ing of the industry and ingenuity of the infidel physicists them-
selves, that even "z'/ct'yhave deduced many useful conclusions."
Dr. Woodrow remarks, very simply, p. 331 : "It is singular that
Dr. Dabney should have fallen into this error," etc. Yes; so
very singular as to be incredible. And I presume that he is
the only attentive reader of my words in America who has
*' fallen into the error" of imputing this eri'or to me. As Dr.
Woodrow says, I condemn it in my Lectures. I repudiate it by
honoring certain learned votaries of physical science. I rejju-
diate it by appealing to certain well-established conclusions of
physical science. I expressly limit my charge of fallibility in
physical science to the presence of "wic/'d or less of error''' min-
gled w4th its many truths.

But as Dr. Woodrow's misconception evinces that it was pos-
sible for one man to fail to understand my position, I will state
it again wdth a plainness which shall defy a similar result.

The perverted physical science which I oppose contradicts
revelation. We believe that the Bible is infallible. Now, my
object is to claim the advantage for the Bible of infallibility as

CKinCISED BY DR. WOODROW. 151

against something that is not iufaHible, in any actual or possi-
ble collision between science — falsely so called — and the Scrip-
tures. This is plain. Now, as Dr. Woodrow and all the good
people for whom I spoke believe, with me, that the Bible is
infallible, all that remains to be done, to give us this advantage,
is to show that physical science, and especially anti-Christian
physical science, is not infallible. Where now is the murder?
Does Dr. Woodrow wish to assert that these human specula-
tions are infallible? I presume not. Then he has no contro-
versy with me here. That obvious and easy thesis I supported,
bv noting, first, that while the fall left man a reasonable crea-
ture, the intellect of his sinful soul was no longer a perfect in-
strument for reasoning ; and we may expect it to be specially
imperfect on those truths against which the prejudices of a heart
naturally alienated from God are interested. Then, alluding to
the fact that these infidel physicists usually assume the arrogant
air of treating their science as certain, and the Bible as uncer-
tain ; and alluding to the claim that, however fallible the ancient
and the mediceval physics, the adoption of the inductive method
has now made the conclusions of modem physics certain, I pro-
ceeded to contest that claim in part, asserting that we must ex-
pect some error still in modern physics. This I proved (ci), by
the principle, that ancient and modern men are of the same
species, and so should be expected to have the same natures
and infirmities; but modern physicists convict their predeces-
sors of a number of errors, whence it is arrogant in the former
to assume that posterity will not convict them of any. I showed
(Jj), that it was not true the inductive method was first invented
and used in science from Lord Bacon's day, because Aristotle is
said to liaA-e described the method ; and whether any logician
described and analj'zed it or not, nature had taught men of com-
mon sense, in all ages, to make some use of it. I asserted (c),
that even the inductive method had not saved modern physics
from all error, perfect as that method miT;ht be, because in fact
modern physicists do not always stick to it faithfully ; they some-
times, at least, yield to the same temptations which seduced the
medifeval physicists. I showed {d), that modern physics had
not yet reached infallilHlity, because it is still corredJng itself.
And I remarked (e), that infallibility could be approximated in

152 THE CAUTION AGAINST ANTI-CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

tlie exact sciences only, in pursuing wliicli, tlie fewness of pre'
mises and exactness of predications maj, by the help of care,
bring entire certainty within the reach even of fallible intellects.
Kow, a great many scholars have concurred with me in apply-
ing this name, " exact sciences," to the knowledge of magnitudes
and number. They must have thought that the others were in
■some sense "inexact sciences." Yet they never dreamed they
were guilty of recommending universal skeptu-lsm of everytli'ing
save the B'lMe and rnatlie'inatlcs. I presume they thought thus:
that these " inexact sciences," true sciences to a certain extent,
notwithstanding their inexactness, should be valued and should
be used as far as was safe, but should be pressed with caution,
and especially that they should be modest when they came in
competition with exact science or infallible revelation.

Now, Dr. Woodrow would reply, at this showing of the mat-
ter, that I must be clear before I require the "inexact science"
to succujnb to the theological jDroposition, that the latter was
indeed God's infallible meaning, and not merely my human sup-
position about it. I grant it fully. And I take him to witness
that I did not require my hearers to commit themselves to the
interpretation of the Westminster Assembly, nor to that of Dr.
Pye Smith, Chalmers, et al., nor to that of Mr. Tajder Lewis, d al.,
nor to my own interpretation of what Moses really meant to
teach about the date and mode of creation. I did not even in-
timate whether I had any interpretation of my own. Indeed, I
behaved with a reserve and moderation which, for so rash a per-
son, was extremely commendable. But I must claim another
position: I must assume that Moses did mean soviething, and
when we are all honestlj^ and certainly convinced by a sufficiently
careful and mature exposition what that something is, then we
have the infallible testimony of the Maker himself, and fallible
human science must bow to it.

But from Dr. Woodrow's next step I must solemnly dissent.
It is that in which he degrades our knowledge of God and re-
demption through revelation to the level of our fallible, human
knowledge of the inexact physical sciences. He is attempting,
page 331, to refute my inference from the fall of man, which he
misrepresents as a commendation of absokite skepticism, to
the imperfection of his speculations. To do this he claims " that

CKITICISED BY DE. WOODROW. 153

tlieology is as mucli a human science as geology, or any other
branch of natural science." "The facts which form the basis
of the science of theology are found in God's Word ; those which
form the science of geology are found in his works; but the
science in both cases is the work of the human mind." To en-
sure us that he is deliberate in propounding this startling doc-
trine, he repeats : " Still, the science of theology as a science is
equally liurnan and tininsjnreil with the science of geology ; the
facts in both cases are divine, the sciences based upon them
human." He then proceeds expressly to extend this liuman and
tininsjnred quality to oicr hiowledge of the great central tilths of
theology !

The grave error of this is unmasked by a single question : is
then the work of the geologist, in constructing hypotheses, in-
ductions, inferences, merely hermeneutical? All that the stu-
dent of the divine science properly does is to interpret God's
Word, and compare and arrange his teachings. Is this all that
geology undertakes? The world had to wait man}^ centuries for
a Kepler and a Newton to expound the laws of the stars ; God
tells us himself that his Word is for his people, and so plain that
all may understand, and the wayfaring man, though a fool, need
not err therein. Again, this degrading view of theology misrejD-
resents the reality. The '" facts of geology" are simply pheno-
menal, material substances. The facts of theolocrv, Mhich Dr.
Woodrow admits to be divine, are Jklactic j^rojyositions, introduc-
ing us into the very heart of divine verities. "God is a spirit."
" The word was God." " The wages of sin is death." Here
are the matured and profoundest truths of the divine science
set down for us in God's own clear words. Does he teach the
laws of geology thus ? This difference is too clear to need ela-
boration. Once more : the critic's view, whether risrht or wronc
is unquestionably condemned by his Confession of Faith and
his Bible. The former, Chap. I., § 5, says: "Our full persua-
sion and assurance of the infallil)le truth and divine authority
thereof is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit, bearing wit-
ness by and with the Word in our hearts." And Chap. XIY.,
§ 2 : " By this faith a Christian believeth to be true whatsoever
is revealed in the Word,^/?^/' the axdhorlty of God h hnse/f SYivali-
ing therein," etc. The Scriptiu'e says: an apostle's preaching

154 THE CAUTION AGAIXST AXTI-CHKISTIAX SCIENCE

"was not -svitli enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demon-
stration of the Spirit and of power ; tliat your faitli slionld not
stand in the wisdom of men, Init in the power of God." (1 Cor.
ii. 4, 5.) The apostle John promises to Christians (1 John ii.
20, 27): "But ye have an unction from the holy one ; and ye
know all things." "The same anuhithuj teacheth you all things,
and is truth, and is no lie."

Dr. Woodrow, perceiving how obnoxious his position might
be shown to be to these divine principles, seeks an evasion in
the claim, that the children of God are as much entitled to ask
and enjoy spiritual guidance when they study God's works as
when they study his Avord. He reminds us that the heavens
declare the glory of God, etc., and asks whether Christians forfeit
his guidance when they seek a fuller knowledge of that glorv in
the heavens and the firmanent. Unfortunately for this evasion,
we have to remind him of a subsequent page of his essay, where
he heaps scorn upon the idea that physical science has any the-
ological tendency, and declares that it is only ignorance which
ascribes to it either a pro-Christian, or an anti-Christian charac-
ter. The physicist, then, is not seeking God's glory in his study
of strata and fossils ; if he does, he has become, like Dr. Dab-
ney, unscientific ; he is seeking only "the oliservable sequences"
of second causes and effects. Farther, the physicists whom
I had in view never seek God anywhere, never pray, and do not
believe there is any spiritual guidance, being infidel and even
atheistic men.

If, then, the " science of theology " is as human and unin-
spired as the science of geology ; and if, as Kichard Cecil has
so tersely expressed it, the meaning of the Bible is practically
the Bible ; the ground upon which we are iuA^ted in the gospel
to repose our immortal, irreparable interests, is as fallible as
geology. How fallible this is, we may learn from its perpetual
retractions and amendments of its own positions, and fi-om the
differences of its professors. Is the basis of a Christian's faith
no better? Is this the creed taught to the future pastors of
the church bv Dr. ^'oodrow ? As was remarked at the outset,
when we predicted such results in the distant future, from the
attempt to teach fallible human science in a theological chair,
we stiU courteously excepted Dr. Woodrow from aU applications

CRITICISED BY DR. WOODROW. 155

of tliis caution. The reader can judge wlietlier my critic has
not deprived himself, in this point, of the benefit of this excep-
tion, and verified my prophecy two generations earlier than I
myself claimed.

The third general tojiic requiring my notice in this critique
is the outsx^oken charge of culpable ignorance. It is said, page
368, that I am " acquainted with neither the methods nor the
ends of physical science, with neither its facts nor its princi-
ples," etc. ; and of this assertion many supposed specimens are
given, served up to the reader with the abundant sauce of dis-
dain and sarcasm. On this I have, first, two general remarks to
make. If it was only intended to ^irove that I am not a technical
geologist, like Dr. Woodrow, which is not necessary to infidel
physics, this end might have been quickly reached without
fifty-two dreary pages of criticism, by quoting my own words,
Sermo7i, page 8 : " We may be possessed neither of the know-
ledge nor ability for entering that field, as I freely confess con-
cerning myself." The other remark is, that all these specimens
of imputed ignorance would have been passed over by me in ab-
solute silence, did they not involve instances and illustrations of
important principles ; for I presume the Presbyterian public
is very little interested in the negative of that question, "Is Dr.
Dabney an ignoramus," the affirmative of which Dr. Woodrow
finds so much interest in arguing.

But it is asserted that I understand " neither the methods nor
the ends " of physical science, because I speak of some such
professed science as " anti-Christian," and suspect it of atheis-
tic tendencies. Pago 353 : " Natural science is itself incapable
of inquiring into the origin of forces . . . and it is impossible
for it to be either religious or anti -religious." Page 354, it is
claimed as a " fact," that the " results reached are not in the
slightest degree affected by the religious character of its stu-
dents." Page 351, I am criticised for asking whether the theo-
logical professor of " natural science in connection with revealed
religion " traces geologic forces up to a creator, and it is charged
as a " grievous mistake to suppose that natural science has any-
thing whatever to do with the doctrine of creation." Well, I
reply, if even a mere physicist had not, we presume that a Chris-
tian divine, put into a theological school to teach the church's

156 THE CAUTION AGAINST ANTI-CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

pastors the " counectiou of natural science witli revealed re-
ligion," ought to have something to do with that " connection."
This, as the attentive reader will perceive, was the question in
that passage of my writing. Hence it is a sheer error to cite
this place as proof of an " utter failure to recognize the jarovince
of natural science."

But in truth, physics, simply as natural science, have a theo-
logical relation. These stitdies deal with the very forces, from
whose ordering natural theology draAvs the a posteriori argu-
ment for the existence of a creator. It is not a " fact," that
these studies are unrelated to the religious views of their stu-
dents. Were this so, it would not have happened that a New-
ton always travelled by astronomical science to the recognition
of a God ; and a La Place declared, as the result of his Mecan-
ique Celeste, that a theory of the heavens could be constructed
without a creator. It would not have happened, that while Dr.
Woodrow always traces natural laws up to the great First Cause,.
Dr. Thomas Huxley should see in Darwin's physical theory-
of evolution by natural selection a perfect annihilation of the
whole teleological argument for the being of a God. Dr. "Wood-
row says in one place, that because the business of natural
science is with second causes, it has no business with first causes.
Because the fisherman is at one end of the pole, he has no
business with the hook and the fish that are at the opposite end
of the line ! Fortunately, on pages 343 and 344, Dr. Woodrow
himself contradicts this error. There he defends his view of a
creation by evolution, by claiming that the stnicture produced
by second causes is as truly God's creation as a first suj^ernatu-
ral structure could be. If that is so, then the study of the se-
cond cause is surely a stud}' of a creation, and so of a creator.
So also Dr. Woodrow's friend. Lord Bacon, contradicts him,
and justifies me in the very place quoted {Ttevlev', page 374) :.
"It is an assured truth and a conclusion of experience, that a.
little or superficial knowledge of philosophy may incline the
mind of man to atheism ; but a farther jjroceeding therein doth
l)ring the mind hack again- to religion ; for in the entrance of
philosophy, when the second causes, which are next unto the
senses, do offer themselves unto the mind of man, if it dwell and
stay there it may induce some oblivion of the highest cause,"

CRITICISED BY DR. WOODROW. 157

— just tlie " tendency " towards unbelief described by me ; " but
when a man passetli on farther, and seeth the dependence of
causes, and the works of providence, then, according to the al-
legory of the poets, he will easily believe that the highest link
of nature's chain must needs be tied to the foot of Jupiter's
ehair." Thus, according to Bacon, natural science has a relig-
ious relationship. What is it indeed but hj'percriticism to ob-
ject to the phrase, " anti-Christian science," and the like, that
natural science is properly neither Christian nor anti-Christian,
when everybody but the critic understood that the terms were
used in the sense of "natural science perverted against religion?"
So fully are such phrases justified by use, and so well under-
stood, that Dr. Duns actually entitles his gigantic volumes on
physical science, " Biblical Natural Science^ What a target,
in that title, for such objections !

On page 372, the reviewer finds an evidence of ignorance in
the passing allusion which I made to the new questions touching
the relative order of strata raised by the results of recent deep-
sea soundings; " all of which," declares Dr. Woodrow, "evinces
an utter misapprehension of the real import of the discoveries in
question." That is to saj^. Dr. Woodrow happens not to be
pleased with that view of the import of these recent discoveries
which I advanced, derived from competent scientific sources.
Therefore the apprehension which happens not to suit him is
all "misapprehension." We shall see, before we are done, that
it IS rather a permanent illusion with the reviewer to account
that his opinion is true science, and true science his opinion.
But we beg his pardon ; we do not purpose to be dogmatized
out of our common sense, nor to allow the reader to be dog-
matized out of his. Let these facts be revicAved, then, in the light
of common sense. It is the current theory of Dr. Woodrow's
triends, the geologists, that the stratified and fossil-bearing rocks
are the result of the action of water, formed of sediment at the
bottom of seas and oceans, and then lifted out of the water by
upheavals. Nov\^ geologists have assigned a regular succession
of lower, and upper, and uppermost, to these strata, determined,
as Lyell remarks, by three guides : the composition of the strata,
the species of fossil life enclosed in them, and the observation
of actual position, where two or more of the strata co-exist.

158 THE CAUTION AGAINST ANTI-CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

Now then, should some new upheaval lift up the bottom of the
North Atlantic, for instance, what is now the surface of the sea
bottom would, immediately after the upheaval, be the top stra-
tum of the laud upheaved. But the deep-sea plummet and the
self-registering thermometer have proved that s)^^ecies of animal
life hitherto determined by the rules of stratigraphy to be suc-
cessive, are in fact cotemporaneous now on the sea bottoms, and
considerable difference of temperature — determining diiierent
species of aquatic life — are found, unaccountably, in neighboring
tracts of the same ocean at depths not dissimilar. Is it not evi-
dent that, in case of such an upheaval, we might have, side by
side, formations of equal recency ? But geologists would have
decided, by jorevious lighto, that they were not equally recent ;
that one was much older than the other. The prevailing strati-
graphy may, consequently, be very probably wrong. Let the
reader take an instance : microscopists have been telling us,
with great pride, that English chalk is composed in large part
of the minute shells of an animalcule, which they name GIolo-
genna. They say that the cretaceous deposits rank as nicsozoic,
below the^^e/ocewd, eocene, midvieiocene in order, and consequently
older in origin. That is. Sir Clias. Lyell says so, in his most
recent work, if he is any authority with Dr. Woodrow. But
the microscopists also tell us, that the slime brought up from the
depths of the North Atlantic by the plummet, of a whitey-gre}"
color when dried, is also composed chiefly of the broken shells
of the tiny Gloljogerince , many of them so lately dead that the
cells still contain the jelly-hke remains of their organic parts.
If this is true, then chalk formations are now viahbig, and
should an upheaval occiu", there would be a chalk bed as really
new, as post tertiary, as the bed of alluvial mud on the banks
of Newfoundland. May it not be, then, that some other
chalk beds on or near the top of the ground, may be less ancient
than the established stratigraphy had claimed ? Such was our
point touching these deep-sea soundings ; and we rather think
that sensible men will not agree with Dr. Woodrow that it can
be pooh-poohed away. But as we are nobodies in science, we
will refer him to a testimony of Dr. Carpenter, of London, late
president of the British Association, who is recognized as per-
haps the first physicist in Great Britain. He says :

CRITICISED BY DR. WOODROW. 159

"Whilst astronomy is of all sciences that which may be considered as most
nearly representing nature as she really is, geology is that which most completely
represents her as she is seen through the medium of the interpreting mind ; the
meaning of the phenomena that constitutes its data being, in almost every instance,
open to question, and the judgments passed tipon the same facts being often different,
according to the qualifications of the several judges. No one who has even a gen-
eral acquaintance with the history of this department of science can fail to see
that the geology of each epoch has been the reflection of the minds by ichich its study
was then directed. " . . . . " The whole tendency of the ever-widening range of
modern geological inquiry has been to shoio koto little reliance can be placed on the
so-called 'laws' of stratigraphical and palceontohgical successions."

Abating the enpliemism, Dr. Carpenter seems as bad as Dr.
Dabney. He will soon require the chastisement due to the
heresy, that the Woodrow opinion is not precisely the authori-
tative science of the case. His testimony is peculiarly signifi-
cant as to the worthlessness of "the so-called 'laws' of strati-
graphy," because he had himself been especially concerned in
the examination of this chalk-mud from the deep-sea sound-
ings.

Dr. Woodrow sees proof of ignorance of even the nomencla-
ture of natural science, in my use of the word naturalli<vx to de-
scribe— what he obviously apprehends I designed to describe — ■
that school which attempts to substitute nature for God as the
ultimate goal of their research. The very passage quoted from
my printed notes by him defined my meaning. " This, there-
fore,"— meaning obviously the unwillingness of this school to
recognize any supernatural cause back of the earliest natui-al
cause — "is the eternity of naturalism; it is atheism." Dr.
Woodrow thinks this an antiquated, and therefore an improper
use of the word. On both points I beg leave to dissent. If I
need an expressive term, why may I not revive an ancient one,
if I define its sense ? Is not this better than coining a new one,
and being obliged to define that? But my term is not anti-
quated. Naturalisinus holds its place to-day in German lexi-
cons; and Webster — surely he is "new-fangled" enough — gives
the word in my sense. But the concrete noun, "naturalist,''
ought to be used in the sense of a student of nature ; not in my
meaning of an advocate of naturalism — in my evil sense. So it
is usually employed. But in the only place where I use it in
the bad sense, I distinguish it sufticiently by the epithet, "proud
naturalist," whose theory of nature is a "form of skepticism."

160 THE CAUTION AGAINST ANTI-CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

Here again I am comforted by the belief that Dr. Woodrow is
the only man in America embarrassed by my nomenclature.

On page 339 of the Review, supposed evidence is found that I
believed, in my ignorance, that the idea of a j)re-Adamite earth
•was first suggested within the memory of the older members of
the Svnod of Virginia; and a great deal of rather poor wit is
pei-petrated as to the age of these members. Having read, for
instance, the introductory chapters of Lyell's Prhic'q)hs of
Geology, twenty years ago, in which quite a full sketch of all
the speculations about this matter is given from ancient times,
I was in no danger of falling into that mistake ; nor did I give
expression to it. My brethren doubtless understood the words,
"this modern impulse," in the sense I designed, namely, as a
^'popular impulse," given by the comparatively recent diffusion of
geological knowledge, and felt in the minds of the people. And
it is substantially true, that just one generation ago, it had not
generally gone fai-ther in the speculations then prevalent among
Americans, than the claim of a pre-Adamite earth in such a
sense as might be reconciled with the Mosaic cosmogouv upon
the well-known scheme of Dr. Pye Smith. Since that day many
other and more aggressive postulates, standing in evil contrast
vidth the first and comparatively scriptural and tolerable one,
have been diffused among our people by irreligious men of sci-
ence. Some of the latter I also enumerated; intimating that,
Avhile we might, if necessary, accept the first, along with such
sound Christians as Dr. Pye Smith, Dr. Chalmers, and Dr.
Woodrow, all of the latter we certainly could not accept con-
sistently with the integrity of the Bible. So that my charge of
anti- Christian character was, at least to a certain extent, just,
against this set of physicists.

Another evidence of my ignorance, upon which Dr. Woodrow
is exceedingly funny, upon pages 367 and 368, is my classifica-
tion of the rocks, as lowest and earliest, the primary rocks all
azoic ; next above them, the secondary rocks, containing remains
of life 2)'i^<^'^ozo'ic and meiocene ; third, the tertiary rocks and
clays containing the pleiocene fossils; and fourth, the alluvia.
Dr. Woodrow then presents a classification, which he says is
"'Eeal Geology," differing from the brief outline I gave chiefly
' — not only — by using more subdivisionss The meaning of the as-

CRITICISED BY DR. WOODROVy-. 161

sertiou that tliis is the "Keal Geology," it must be presumed,
is, that this is Dr. Woodrow's geology ; for his classification is
not identical with Dana's, or Lyell's, any more than mine is.
But it is not true that Dr. Dabney " comes forward as a teacher
of this science." In that very lecture I state expressly that I
"do not presume to teach technical geology." My avowed, as
my obvious, purpose was only to cite the theory of the geolo-
gists in its briefest outline, unencumbered with details and
minor disputes of its teachers among themselves, sufficiently to
make my argument intelligible to ordinary students of theology.
For this object details and difierences were not necessary, and I
jDroperly omitted them. Dr. Gerald Molloy, of Maynooth, — a
writer of almost unequalled perspicuity and intelligence, — with
]3recisely the same end in view, goes no farther in the way of
classification than to name as his three divisions, igneous, meta-
riiorpli (C, and aqueous rocks. Here is a still greater suppression
of details. Dr. Woodrow may now set this exceedingly rudi-
mentary division over against his detailed "Real Geology," and
represent Dr. Molloy also as ignorant of what he sj)eaks of.

But, it is presumed, Dr. Woodrow would add that my rudi-
ments of a classification were partly wrong, namely : that I call
the igneous rocks (granite, trap, etc.) primary, and that I apply
the term azoic to all rocks devoid of fossils ; whereas it has
seemed good in the eyes of the Woodrow geology — the only
" real geology" — not to call the igneous rocks j?ri?na?'y, and to
restrict the term azoic technically to a very small segment of the
azoic rocks, viz., to the sedimentary rocks, which have no fossils.

Well, the Woodrow geology is entitled to choose its own no-
menclature, we presume ; and so are the majority of geologists
u-Jto differ from it entitled to choose theirs ; and I have a right to
follow that majority. Dr. Woodrow, as ho intimates, chooses to
follow Sir Chas. Lj^ell in his crotchet of refusing to call the
"igneous" rocks '^ primary. '' The latter uses the word "pri-
mary " as synonymous with the palseozoic group. But Dr.
AVoodrow also knows that this freak of Lyell's is prompted by a
particular feature of his " uniformitarian " scheme, and is a de-
parture from the ordinary nomenclature of the earlier geologists.
He knows also that many geologists apply the term azoic to all
the crystalline rocks, and not to the non-fossiliferous strata of

Voi. III.— 11.

162 THE CAUTION AGAINST ANTI-CHKISTIAN SCIENCE

sedimentary rocks only. Tims, Duns, " following competent
men of science," diyides tlius, first. Azoic; second. Primary,
equivalent to the paleozoic ; tlien, secondary, equivalent to the
mesozoic ; and fourth, tertiary, or cainozoic. So Dana states his
division thus, "I. Azoic time. II. Palseozoic time. III. Me-
sozoic time. lY. Cainozoic time. V. The age of mind." And
what can be more true than that the igneous rocks, ordinarily
stj'led primary, may be also termed azoic ; when the ahsence of
fossil 7'erjiains of life hi them is at least as uniform and promi-
nent a trait in them as any other ? But the reader ^ill feel that
this is an exceedingly small business.

The specimen of ignorance which amuses Dr. Y\^oodrow per-
haps most of all, is my notice of some geologists' "nebular hy-
pothesis," criticised on pages 344 and 345 of the Review. This
idea; — that our solar system w^as first a vast mass of rotating, in-
candescent vapor, and then a sun and a set of planets, of which
the latter, at least, had been cooled first to a molten liquid, and
then to a solid substance on their sin-faces — is said to have been
suggested first by La Place as a mere hypothesis ; and the only
seeming fact giving it even a show of solid support was the ex-
istence of those faint, nebulous spots of light among the stars
which no telescope had as yet made anything of. Kow every
one wdio reads infidel books of science observ^es how glibly they
prate of this supposition, as though there were some certainty
that it gave the true origin of our earth. Meantime Sir "William
Herschel first, and then Lord Kosse, applied more powerful
magnifiers to them. The effect of Herschel's telescope was to
resolve some of the nehidce into distinct clusters of stars. He
then divided them into the three classes of the resolved, the re-
solvahle, and the xinresolved, suggesting that a still more power-
ful instrument would probably resolve the second class. Lord
Kosse, in our own day, constructed a still larger reflector, and
the result is, that more of the nelndca, when sufiiciently magnified,
are now seen to be clusters of stars. Kow, must not every sober
mind admit with me that "the chief ground of plausibility is
thus removed " fi'om the atheistic supposition ? The probability
is, that the other nebidm are what all are shown to be, which
have been resolved. Then the evidence of fact is lacking that
the heavens ever contained planetary matter in that form. For

CRITICISED BY DR. WOODROW. 1 G3

tlie only other luminous and nebulous bodies known to astronomy
are tlie comets, and tliej evidently are not cosmic or planetary
matter, i. e., not matter -wliicli can be cooled into a solid as large
as a world, because, however vast their discs and trains, their
quantity of matter is so amazingly small that they produce no
appreciable perturbations in the orbits of the planets near them.
But Dr. Woodrow exclaims that the newly discovered S2)ectro-
scojye has taught us the chemistry of the heavens, and has shown
that some nelmlce are incandescent gases. Well, let us see about
this spectroscojM, of which we have heard a great deal these latter
years. One thing Avhich we have heard is the following sensi-
ble caution from Dr. Carpenter. Speaking of the assumption
founded on the sjyectroscojye, that the sun's chromosphere is in-
candescent hydrogen, he says, "Yet this confidence is based en-
tirely on the assumption that a certain line which is seen in the
spectrtim of a hydrogen flame, means Tiydrogen also when seen
in the sjpectmin of the sun's chromosphere. ... It is by no
means inconceivable that the same line might be produced by
some other substance at present anknown." Dr. Carpenter then
proceeds to administer a similar caution to Dr. Huggins, one of
the professed authorities wdth the spectroscoije. Such is the
skepticism of England's greatest physicist about its revelations.
But to be more particular : its friends tell us that the s^jectra of
luminous rays j)assing from incandescent sohds through a gase-
ous laedluhi have certain dark lines in them ; whereas, when the
incandescent gases are themselves the sources of the rays, the
spe( tra have the cross-lines in different places. Now hear how
Dr. Roscoe tells this story of Dr. Huggins, about the nehulce in
the spectroscope, in the great work of the former on sjjectrum
analysis. " He," (Dr. Huggins) " instead of having a band of
light intersected by dark lines, indicating the physical constitu-
tion of the body to be that corresponding to the stars, found the
light from these nebulm consisted simply of tlcree instdated hrigJit
lines," etc. The sober reader will be apt to think with me, and
with Dr. Carpenter, that so minute a result, and so unhke the
other results of more distinct spectrum analyses, gives no basis
for any conckision "whatever. And this will be confirmed when
he hears Mr. Lockyer, another fiiend of the &p)'^''^''0'^<-02>(^, ^''•y>
" The light of some of those nehulcB visible in a modcrctelv large- •

164 THE CAUTION AGAINST ANTI-CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

iustrumeut lias been estimated to vaiy from one l,500tli to one
20,000tli of the light of a single sperm candle consuming 158
grains of material per hour, viewed at a distance of a quarter of
a mile. That is, such a candle a quarter of a viile off, is twenty
thousand tunes more hrilliant than tJie nebula /" Let the reader
now consider what likelihood there is, that anj art can ever sep-
arate all the stray beams of other light diffused through our atmos-
phere, from this almost infinitely slender beam, so as to be sure
that it is dealing with the rays of the nebula alone. But a rnicro-
seopic shadoio of this almost invisible ra}" is the "conical ball of
the chassepot gun " on which Dr. ^Voodrow relies, to pierce the
solid steel of common sense ! This is, to our view, shooting
with rays of " moonshine," in the thinnest of its metaphorical
senses.

The last of these specimens is that noted on page 366 of the
Review. I had shown that the first structures made by God,
though superuaturally j^roduced, had every trait of naturalness.
This was then illustrated by me, by reference to one of the trees
of paradise. To this Dr. Woodrow makes the very singular ob-
jection, that I ought not to found scientific arguments upon sur-
mises! He overlooks the simple fact that this surmise about
the tree of paradise with annual rings, was not my argument at
all, but only my illustration of it ! Had he read the previous
paragraph of my " Notes," or pages 13 and 14 of my sermon, with
attention, he would haA'e found tJiere my argument, founded, not
on suppositions about a possible tree or bone, but on impregna-
ble principles of natural science itself. Does not Dr. Woodrow
know that every parable is, in its nature, a supposition? Yet
parables are excellent illustrations. When Jotham, the son of
Gideon, in the sixth chapter of Judges, answered the men of
Shechem with his parable of the trees, Dr. Woodrow would have
put this reply in the mouths of Abimelech's faction : " That
Jotham was exceedingly illogical, for the reason that the ac-
tual utterance of words by olive and fig trees, vines and bram-
bles, was a phenomenon not known to exist."

On page 335 of his Iieview, Dr. "Woodrow prepares the way
for his charges of ignorance and inconsistency against me, by
the following illustration : "Just as leading Presbyterian theo-
logians, personally hiowti to Dr. Dahney, have taught that * every

CRITICISED BY DR. WOODROW. 165

obstacle to salvation, arising from the character and govern-
ment of God, is actually removed, and was intended to be re-
moved, that thus every one of Adam's race might be saved,' and
that 'the Father covenants to give to the Son, as a reward for
the travail of his soul, a 2)<'rt of those for whom he dies.'" To
many readers it has doubtless appeared unaccountable that so
"far-fetched" an illustration was sought. The clerical readers
of the .So>(f/ie?'/i Presljyterian Eevleio and the Southern Presbyte-
rian, can easily recall the clue of association which suggested it.
They will remember that nine and a half years ago, these two
periodicals, which have now been made the vehicles of the
charge of scientific heresy against me, contained articles which
insinuated against me the very charge of theological heresy, viz.,
an indefinite design in Christ's atonement, which is here intro-
duced by Dr. Woodrow as an illustration. The occasion of
that charge was my action, in obedience to the General Assem-
bly, as chairman of a conunittee for conference and union with
the United Synod of the South. That committee j)roposed to
the Presbyteries a declaration of doctrinal agreement, of which I
happened to be the penman. The conductors of the two presses
in Columbia, opposing the union, sought to prevent it, in part,
by criticising the orthodoxy of the doctrinal propositions, and
intimating the doctrinal unsoundness of them and their writer
in no indistinct terms. True, this intimation remained ■^athout
eflect, as might have been supposed, when aimed equally against
the orthodoxy of my obscure self, and of such well-known and
learned Old School theologians as Dr. Wm. Brown, Col. J. T.
L. Preston, Dr. J. B. Pamsey, and Dr. McGufley — the last two
conferring as informal members of the committee. We see,
when reminded of this history, how natural it was that Dr.
Woodrow, seeking for a biting illustration, should recall this
one. And the clerical readers of the Bevieic have doubtless al-
most as naturally understood him as insinuating that "the lead-
ing Presbyterian theologian, personally known to Dr. Dabney,"
was no other than Dr. Dabney himself. If the words bear that
construction, all I have to say is, that I never wrote or uttered
the statements enclosed in the quotation marks.

But I find these very words ascribed by Dr. B. M. Palmer, in
a controversial piece against the United Synod, to Dr. H. H,

166 THE CAUTION AGAINST ANTI-CHllISTIAN SCIENCE

Boyd, a distinguished minister of that l)ody. Doubtless, Dr.
Palmer quoted them correctly. Grant, now, that the insinua-
tion against me, which seemed to lie so obviously in Dr. Wood-
row's reference, was not intended by him, and that he also
meant to designate Dr. Boyd ; the question recurs, why was so
peculiar and remote an illustration selected ? The only answer
is this : that an intimation of Dr. Dabney's unworthiness might
be given from his intimate association with c. theological
comrade so erroneous as Dr. Boyd was esteemed at Colum-
bia. To this again I have to say that Dr. Boyd was not
"personally known" to me; that I never spoke to him save
once, on the steps of a hotel, as I was passing to the cars;
and that I never heard him preach, nor road one line of his
theological WTitings, save the few quoted by Dr. Palmer, and
thus had no personal knowledge of his unsoundness or ortho-
doxy. My whole knowledge on this point was a statement re-
ceived through acquaintances, which I believed to be authentic,
coming from Dr. Boyd himself; and that statement was, that
when our Lynchburg declaration appeared. Dr. Boyd, counsel-
ing with his own brethren in his Presbytery, earnestly advised
them to accept the union ou those terms, although, as he de-
clared, that joint declaration was, in his view, purely an Old
School document, and distinctl}'' condemnatory of whatever was
peculiar in his own theological views. For, he said, the best in-
terests of the churches demanded union ; and inasmuch as his
brethren were doctrinally already upon this Old School plat-
form, he did not desire selfishly to gratify his own peculiar doc-
trinal preferences, at the cost of obstructing their comfort and
usefulness ; his points of difference from the platform not being,
in his view, vital.

The fourth, and far most important vindication which remains,
is of the fundamental position of my sermon on anti-Cliristian
science. That position has been seen by the reader in the ex-
tracts given in this reply (pages 143-'5 above) from my letter of
May 1st last to Dr. Woodrow. That position may be thus re-
stated : the structures of nature around us cannot present, by
their traits of naturalness, a universally demonstrative proof of
a natural, as against a supernatural origin, upon any sound, theis-
tic theory. Because, supposing a creator, originating any struc-

CRITICISED BY DR. AVOODROW. 167

tiires and orgauisms supernaturally, he also must have conferred
on his first things equal traits of naturalness. Hence, should it
be found that this creator has uttered Ms testimony io the super-
natural origin of any of them, that testimony fairly supersedes
all natural arguments a postenori from natural analogies to a
natural origin. Mv arguments for this position are briefly stated
in those extracts inserted aboye (pages l'i3-'45.) The rea-
sonini;;, thouGfh brief, will be sufficient for the candid reader, and
I shall not weary him by repeating it.

But Dr. Woodrow, Heviev^ pages 365 and 366, impugns one
of my points. He will not admit it as proven that a wise crea-
tor, producing a first organism to come under natural law, and to
be the parent of a species of like organisms, must haye made it
natural. He says, " he does not know, and he thinks it hkely
that Dr. Dabney does not know either." And he proceeds yery
facetiously to speak of my imagination about the rings in the
tree of paradise as the sole basis of my argument. The tree
was only an illustration. That basis I will state again. If the-
ism is right, as Dr. "W'oodrow believes, then the creator is doubt-
less voluntary, kno-s\-ing, and wise. "^Thile it is often very unsafe
j)hilosophy to surmise that the creative mind must have been
prompted by this or that final cause, it is always very safe to
say that he was prompted by some final cause, and that a con-
sistent and intelligent one. For this is but saying that he is
wise, and what he has efiected is a disclosure of what he designed
to effect, so far as it is completed. Now, God, in producing his
first organisms by creation, must have designed them to exist
Tinder the reign of natural law ; because we see that he uni-
formly j^Zace* thein imder that law. That is to say, what he
does is what he intends to do. But natural law could not gov-
ern that which remained contra-natiu'al in quahties as well as
origin ; therefore God must have created his first organisms,
while supernatural in origin, yet natural in traits. This argu-
ment is, if possible, still more demonstrative when applied to
the first living organisms, vegetable and animal, because these
were made by God to be the parents of species propagated by the
first, and thenceforward in successive generations. Now, not
only does revelation say that these supernatural first organisms
" yielded seed after their I'ind" but natural science also tells us

168 THE CAUTION AGAINST ANTI-CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

most clearly, that the true uotion of propagation, pei-petuating
a given sjDecies, is the parents' conveying nnto the progeny all
their own essential, specific qualities. So true is this notion,
that the most scientific definition of sjMcies is now stated sub-
stantially thus by the greatest living natural historians. A
given species denotes jxist that aggregate of j^roijerties which every
individual thereof derives hy its natural propagation. Hence it
is certain that the first organism, supernaturally produced, j^os-
sessed every essential quality natural to its species ; otherwise
it could not have been a parent of species.

Suppose then, that by any possibility, a physicist should ex-
amine the very remains of one of those first organisms, he would
find in it the usual traits of naturalness ; yet he could not infer
thence a natural origin for it, because it was a first thing. Hence
it is concluded, with a mathematical rigidity, that, granted a
creator anywhere in the past, the argument from naturalness of
structure to naturalness of origin cannot he universally conclusive.
And supposing the structure under examination to be one of
which revelation asserts a divine origin, then, in that case, this
testimony of the almighty maker absolutely cuts across and su-
persedes the opposing inference from natural analogies. Such
was the doctrine of my notes and sermoa. Dr. Woodrow seems
to conclude that, in such a case, God's workmanship would
teach a lie, by seeming to be natural in origin when it was not.
The solution of his embarrassment is simple. It is not God
who teaches the lie, but perverted science going owi of her
sphere ; and that this question of apyr^ is oat of her .[-p/n/'e, Dr.
Woodrow has himself taught with a fortunate inconsistency, on.
page 352 of his Bevieiv.

But as I know nothing about science, I beg leave to fortify mj
position by three scientific testimonies. The first shall be that
of Dr. Buchner, the German materialist and atheist. He de-
clares, in a recent work, that the ideas of God and of science are
incompatibles, in this sense, that just to the degree a divine ac-
tion is postulated, the conclusions of science are to that extent
estoj)ped. Xow, what is this but confessing that the only eva-
sion from my argument is atheism? The second testimony
shall be from a more friendly source. Dr. Carjienter, in the in-
augural speech referred to above, iises the following closing

CRITICISED BY DR. WOODROW. 169

words. T\"lien we make allowance for a certain euphemism,
promiDted bj liis attitude as president of a body purely scien-
tific, many of wliose members are avowed infidels, and by the
occasion of liis speech, which was wholly non-religious, we shall
see that his testimony is very decided. After showing that every
physical law, correctly interpreted, tells us of one single, al-
mighty, intelHgent Cause, the supreme, spiritual God, he says :
" The science of modern times, however, has taken a more special
direction. Fixing its attention exclusively on the ordei' of na-
ture, it has separated itself wholly from theology, whose function
it is to seek after its cause. In this science is fully justified.'*
. . . "But when science, passing beyond its own limits, as-
svimes to take the place of theology, and sets up its conception
of the order of nature as a sufficient account of its cause, it is
invading a province of thought to which it has no claim ; and
vot ^inreasonahly provokes the hostility of those who ought to be
its best friends."

The third witness is Prof. F. H. Smith, who fills the chair of
Natural Science in the University of Virginia. His long expe-
rience, vast learning, subtle and profound genius, and well known
integrity and caution of mind, entitle his scientific opinions to a
Aveight second to none on this side of the Atlantic. He makes,
in two letters to me, the following statements :

•'The transcendent importance of the subject of the letter with which you lately
houored me forbade any response which was not deliberate.

"The 'naturalness' of the new-created world is, in my judgment, conclusively
established in your recent letter to me. You wholly demolish the argument
of the infidel, who deduces from such continued and uninterrupted naturalness
the eternity and self -existence of nature. To me it is simply inconceivable, that
the physical world should ever have borne marks of recent creation, or that it shall
ever present signs of impending annihilation. Nay, granting the existence of such
inconceivable signs, I do not see how we could interpret them. If they were pos-
sible, they must be unintelligible.

"The beginning of a universe regulated by mechanical laws must have beert
some ' configuration, ' to which it might have been brought by the operation of th©
same mechanical laws from an antecedent configuration, mathematically assignable.
I undertook to illustrate this trutli to my class last session, by this simple example:
The undisturbed orbit of a planet is an ellipse, described with a velocity periodi.^
cally varying by a definite law. The planet passes any given point of its orbit with,
the same velocity, and in the same direction, in each recurring round. If it were
arrested there, and then projected with that velocity in that direction, it would re-
sume identically the same orbit. The actual motion at each point of the orbit is,
therefore, the necessary projectUe motion of the new-created planet at that point.

170 CAUTION AGAINST ANTI-cTHRISTIAN SCIENCE

Hence, wherever created and projected, its iniUal motion migJit have been the result
of centrifugal action. Thus the elhptical circulation presents no marks of a begin-
ning or of an end. As regards the terms of its existence, the phenomenon is dumb.
The lesson it teaches is not the shallow sophism that it has no beginning or end ;
but that whatever information we derive on these points, we must seek from a source
other than natiire.

' ' When this first great truth was first apprehended by me, it filled me with a
glow of a new discovery. You may smile at the confession ; for to one well ac-
quainted with the history of philosophy, the statement may appear to be one of
venerable antiquity. Indeed, I foimd it myself, subsequently, ably set forth in an
article ' on geology, which appeared in the Southern Quarterly Review (Columbia,
S. C), in 18G1. I believe that Mr. P. H. Gosse, a British naturalist, advanced
substantially the same idea in a book quaintly called. Omphalos ; the name and key-
note of which were suggested by the probable fact that Adam had a navel, though
lie was never united to a mother by an \imbilical cord.

' ' Be the history of the doctrine what it may, none the less acceptable and timely
is the irresistible logic by which you have established it. Most heartily do I agree
with you in affirming that the formula, ' Like effects imply like causes, ' fails for
the initial state of the world, and cannot, therefore, logically be used to disprove a
beginning, " etc.

' ' AU the astronomer's statements " (calculating possible past or future eclipses),
' ' as to the past or the future, are limited by the qualification, either overt or covert,
nisi Deus intersit."

"We claim, that a case of what hiwyers call " circumstan-
tial evidence," in a court of justice, is a fair illustration of the
logical rules which ought to govern in all these hypothetic geo-
logical arguments to a natural origin for given structures. The
science of law has exactly defined the proper rules for such evi-
dence. These rules require the prosecution to show that their
hypothesis, viz., the guilt of the man indicted, not only may
possibly, or may very probably, satisfy all the circumsiaiiiice
which have been proved to attend the crime, but that it is the
onJy j)0ssihle hypothesis w^iich does satisfy them all. And the
defence may test this in the following manner : if they can sug-
gest airy other hypothesis, invented, surmised, or imagined, even,
which is naturally possible, and which also satisfies all the cir-
cumstances, then the judge will instruct the jury that the hy-
pothesis of guilt is not proven, and the accused is acquitted.
Such is the rule of evidence to which logical science has been
broiTght by a suitable sense of the sacredness and value of a
human life. Now, the conditions of scientific hypotlieses are
logically parallel; they are cases of '■^ circurristant'ial evidence.'^

' An article which appeared anonymously, but was written by R. L. Dabney.

CRITTCISED BY DR. WOODEOW. 171

Suppose, then, for argument's sake, that some S'lch hypothesis,
in the hand of an infidel physicist, should pnt our Bible iipou
its trial for yeracitv. It is the time-honored belief of the Chris-
tian world that the truth of that Bible is the only hope of immor-
tal souls. Surely the issue should be tried under at least as
solemn a sense of responsibility, and as strict logical require-
ments, as an indictment against a single life.

But I carry this parallel further. Grant the existence of a
Creator God, " of eternal power and Godhead," then vre of the
defence have always the alternative hypothesis, which is always
naturally possible, viz., that any original structure, older than
all human obseryations, whicl; is brought by anti-Christian sci-
ence into one of her " circumstantial " arguments, may possibly
haye been of direct diyine origin. Hence it follows, that should,
perchance, the Bible contradict any scientific hypothesis of the
origin of things, science is incapable, from the yery conditions
of the case, of conyicting the Bible of falsehood upon such an
issue. The thoughtful reader can now comprehend the jiolemic
prejudice which prompts Buchner to say that the yery idea of
God is an intrusion into the rights of science; and Huxley to
argue that the evidence fi-om design for the existence of a God
is annihilated by the evolution scheme of Darwin. These infi-
dels have perspicacity enough to see that the theistic position
vacates their pretended scientific deductions as to the origin of
stractures and organisms. Let us explain. A murder has been
committed in secret; there is no parole testimony, appar-
ently, to unfold the mystery. The prosecutors therefore pro-
ceed, with exceeding industry, care, patience, and ingenuity,
to collect the materials for a circumstantial argument, to fix the
guilt upon Mr. X. T. Z., against whom a vague suspicion has
arisen. These lawyers note even the most trivial matters, the
direction of the shot, thd smell of gunpowder upon the garments
of the corpse, the scrap of blackened paper which formed a part
of the wadding of the gun, and a thousand other circumstances.
They weave them into their hypothesis of X. Y. Z.'s guilt, with
a skill which is apparently demonstrative. But there now steps
forth a new witness, named L. M., and testifies that he saw the
murder committed by another man, named A. B., who had not
been hitherto connected with the event. !Now, there is, uatu-

172 THE CAUTION AGAINST ANTI-CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

rally, DO antecedent impossibility tliat A. B. miglit commit a
murder, or tliis murder. Let us suppose that such was the case.
Every lawyer knows that the issue would now turn soldy iipon
the cowpetency and credibility of L. M. as a witness. If the pros-
ecution desire still to sustain the proposition that X. T. Z. is the
murderer, they now have but one course open to them : they
must successfully impugn the competency or credibility of L.
M. If they admit these fully, their case against X. T. Z. is
naught ; their circumstantial hypothesis falls to the ground, "^vith-
out a farther blow. That hypothesis was exceedingly plausible ;
the antecedent probabilities of its truth were great, or even al-
most conclusive ? Yes. Still, if L. M. is true, they now con-
clude nothing. They show that X. Y. Z. ravjld have killed t\i&
murdered man. L. M. shows that actually he did not. The
conditions of the argument of infidel science against the Bible
and the creative agency of God are exactly parallel. Their hy-
pothesis may be, naturally speaking, every way probable ; but
the Bible comes in as a parole-witness, and testifies that God^
and not nature, was the agent of this given work. Xow, we be-
lieve that the Bible is a competent and credible witness. Hence
its voice supersedes the " circumstantial evidence " here.

It is complained, that when we thus refuse to allow the
maxim, " Hke effects imply like causes," to thrust itself into
competition with the testimony of revelation upon these ques-
tions of the first origin of the world, we deprive mankind of its use
in every scientific induction, and in all the experimental conclu-
sions of practical life. Dr. Woodrow is not satisfied with the
reply, that within the sphere of natural induction, where we are
entitled to assume the absence of the supernatural, his canon is
vahd. He attempts to quote me against myself, as saying, on
page 15 of my notes : " It is not experience which teaches us
that every effect has its cause ; but the a pAori reason. Very
true, intuition, not mere experience, teaches us that every effect
has its cause. That intiiition is : had there been no cause, there
would have been no eflect." Had my doctrine been attended
to, as developed in my sixth lecture, these words would have
been found on r>Si"e 49 : " The doctrine of common sense here
is, that when the mind sees an effect, it intuitively refers it to
some cause.'''' For instance, when we come upon a stratified

CRITICISED BY DR. WOODROV;. 173

rock, intuition necessarily refers its existence to so7ne cause,
either to God, or to watery action, or some other adequate
natural agency. But the question is : vlilch cause f If we are
practically assured of the absence of the supernatural cause,
then of course we must assign the effect to one or another natu-
ral cause. But if toe have good reason to think that the svper-
natitral cause may possihly have l)een present, then the attempt to
confine that effect to a natural cause, upon the premise that
" similar effects imply the same causes," obviously becomes an
invalid induction. Now, should it appear that revelation testifies
to the presence of the supernatural cause at a given juncture,
that would be good reason to think, at least, its possible pre-
sence ; and then the naturalistic induction becomes invalid. It
obviously comes then into that class which Bacon stigmatizes as
worthless for the purpose of complete demonstration, under the
term, " Inductio sinipUcis enumerationisr Kovxiin Organiim,
L'J). I. § 105 : ^^ Inductio enim, quce procedit 2^^^ enumeratlonem
siinpllcein,, res pueriL'is est, et pi'ecario, concludit, et pericido ex-
ponittir ah instantia contradlctoria^'' etc. Yes ; in the case in
hand, the instantia contradlctoria would be the instance of a
supernatural origin, competently testified by revelation. Hear
even the sensualistic philosopher. Mill, [Logic, p. 187) : " But
although we have always a propensity to generalize from un-
varying experience, wo are not always warranted in doing so.
Before we can be at Hberty to conclude that something is uni-
versally true because we have never known an instance to the
contrary, it must be proved to us, that if there were in nature
any instances to the contrary, we should have known of them,"
etc. This is, so far, sound logic. But now, should it be that
the Bible testifies to structures supernaturally originated in a
pre- Adamite time, it is obvious that we should not have known
of them, for the simple reason that no human witness was ex-
tant. The universal reference of all structures to natural causes
would be, according to Mill himself, in that case, the very in-
duction we " were not warranted " in making. What can be
plainer ?

Dr. Woodrow cites as an instance the wine made of water by
Christ, at Cana. He says, page 359, "Had one of the guests
been questioned as to its origin, he would unhesitatingly have

174 THE CAUTION AGAIJ^ST ANTI-CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

said tliat it was tlie expressed juice of the grape. But, by unex-
ceptionable testimony, it could have been proved that it had
been water a few minutes before, and had never formed part of
the grape at all. Now, in view of this fact, according to Dr.
Dabney's reascming, we are forever debarred from concluding
that wine is the juice of the grape, unless we shall have first
proved the ahsoice of God's intervening powder," etc. I reply:
Not so. My position is, that we would be " debarred from con-
cluding " that a given vessel of wine " was the juice of the grape,"
in the particular cases where "unexceptionable testimony" had
" first proved the PRESENCE of God's intervening power." This
one word removes all the confusions and misconceptions of the
subsequent pages of his critique. Indeed, I desire no better
instance than Dr. AYoodrow's admission touching this wine of
Cana to exemplify my view. Any sensible man, drinking good
wine under ordinary circumstances, would of course suppose
that it came from grapes. But if competent testimony showed
that, in this case, a miracle-worker had been present, who had
infinite power, and a benevolent motive, to make tJds wine with-
out grapes, his good sense w^ould not lead him, admitting the
testimony, to argue that this must also have come from grapes,
because all natural wine uniformly comes from that source.
And my position is precisely parallel. Wo examine numerous
structures, whose beginning we did not ourselves see, and they
all wear, seemingly, the appearance of full and equal natural-
ness. We were about to ascribe them all, very naturally, to a
natural source. But should "unexceptionable testimony" com©
in, asserting that some among them had a supernatural origin,
we should then conclude, precisely as the man of " common
sense" at Cana had to conclude, that hi this particular case^ the
inference from naturalness of qvalities to a' natural origin did
not hold. This is all I have ever asked. Dr. Woodrow con-
cedes it.

But he argues that if I hold on this ground, that there never
was any pre-Adamite earth — as he understands me to hold —
then I must also hold that the fossils, in all deposits older than
the Adamic, are a species of shams ; that they never were alive ;
and that the existence of these portions of matter would be ab-
solutely unaccountable. Indeed, he thinks I should be driven

CRITICISED BY DR. WOODEOAV. 175

to the belief, tliat the visible works of God are a lie ; which is
as disastrous as believing his Word a lie. But if, ou the other
hand, I do admit an earth existing one fortnight before Adam,
the Scriptures are, upon my view of them, as fatally impugned
as thouerh an earth had existed a million of vears before Adam.
Hence, he thinks my main position would he useless, were it not
false. Let us inspect the two horns of this cruel dilemma. As
to the first : he will not allow me to say of the fossils, " We have
no occasion to deny their oi'ganic character." He thinks my
"whole argument rests upon the supposition that the fossils
may have been created as we find them." He cannot see what
else I mean by saying that if many of "these rocks" may have
been created, then the pre-Adamite date of fossils falls also.
He can only understand it in this way, either that the fossils
never were anything but rock, or that God thrust them into the
rocks after they had died, and after the rocks were made, which
would be very preposterous.

Had Dr. Woodrow attended to my meaning, when I spoke of
many of "these rocks" as possibly created, he would have un-
derstood me. He seems to suppose that I meant the fossili-
ferous rocks. In fact, I was speaking of the stratified but non-
fossll'iferous rocks — the azoic of his nomenclature. That geolo-
gists recognize quite a large mass of these, is plain from the
fact that they have a separate division and name for them.
Now they teach us that these azoic, but truly stratified rocks,
were the work of the same sedimentary action which has through
long ages produced the fossiliferous stratified rocks. I trust my
meaning will now be seen. It is this : suppose it should be
found that revelation testified these azoic sedimentary rocks,
so-called, were not growing through long ages by deposition
from water, but, along with some other things, were made by
the almighty word of God. If that were gi'anted, then the " laws,
so-called, of stratigraphic succession," as established by geology,
are without adequate proof ; and it again becomes an open ques-
tion— to which Scripture may possibly testify — when and how
the living creatures which are now fossils did live, and when
and how the deposits containing their remains were formed. I
say, in that case, the geologists' present arrangement of strati-
graphical succession is unproved. As I have stated, the data

176 THE CAUTION AGAINST ANTI-CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

fioiii which thej claim to have settled this order — proving, as
they suppose, that some fossils are such ages upon ages older
than some others — are of three kinds : the observed order of
strata where they are actually in juxtaposition ; the kinds of
organic life thev contain ; and the material and structure of the
stratzim itself. Now, in the case supposed, this last datum has
become inconclusive. One stone is lost from their arch of evi-
dence, and the whole arrangement of the stratigraphic succes-
sion becomes unsettled. For the reasoning in support of it
now involves a vicious circle. For instance, the geologist has
concluded that the non-fossiliferous clay-slate is a very old
stratified rock, because without fossils. Again, he has con-
cluded that a certain species of fossil life is old, because formed
in some stratiim very near that very old slate. Then he con-
cludes that some other stratum is also old, because that old
species of fossils is found in it. But the basis of all these infer-
ences is lacking in the case I have supposed, and the reasoning
^'•roceeds in a circle.

The other horn of the dilemma made for me is equally unsta-
ble. It was urged that, if I had to admit the existence of an
earth one fortnight older than Adam, the interpretation placed
on the Scriptures by the "Westminster Assembly is as violently
outraged as though that pre-Adamite earth were millions of years
older than Adam ; whence Dr. Woodrow supposes it to follow
that my main position, if it were not false, would be useless. I
have shown that it is not false ; I will now show that, as with
Prof. F. H. Smith, and so many other learned men, judges, it is
of vital use, after we admit a pre-Adamite earth. Its use is, that
it alone can save Dr. Woodrow and us from an endless regress-as
into a naturalistic atheism. Let us review that naturalistic argu-
ment, as the evolutionists and the atheist Biichner insist on us-
ing it, and as Dr. Woodrow claims it ought to be used, untram-
melled by my position. The maxim, " Like effects imply like
causes," must be pushed, say they, universalh' ; if restricted by
my rule, the very basis of experimental science is gone. But
now, theism says that there were first things, somewhere in the
past, created, and not evolved naturally. There was a first man,
not naturally born of a mother, but created, the father of sub-
sequent men. Yet this first man must also have been natural in

CRITICISED BY Dll. WOODROW. 177

all his organization, in order to be the father of men. But had
these physicists subjected his frame to their experimental inves-
ti<i;ation, thev would have concluded that, because his orci;aniza-
tion was natural, his origin must have been natural. He, there-
fore, bj their logic, was not the first man, but had a natural
iather. Who does not see that the same process of reasoning
applies equally well to that sujDposed earlier man, and then to
liis father ? Who does not see that the same logic, consistently
followed, runs us back into an infinite natural series, without
any first term, or first cause ? Dr. Woodrow, then, must cease
to oppose my doctrine, in order to save himself from the infidel
evolution theory. And the evolutionist must accept my doc-
trine, in order to save himself from that absolute " eternity of
naturalism, which is atheism." But if my doctrine is squarely
accejDted, then, on every question of the o.px'rt of things, of tlie
when and tJia hoio of the origin of nature, the testimony of rev-
elation properly and reasonably supersedes all natural inferences
contradictory thereto, when once the testimony is clearly under-
stood.

But hoto should that testimony of the Bible be understood?
It would appear that I have been much misapprehended here,
in spite of the caution with which I refrained from dogmatizing'
on this point. It has been supposed that my whole argument
involves the assumption of that sense placed upon the Mosaic
record by the Westminster Assembly, totally denying a pre-
Adamite earth. I will therefore attempt to place my meaning
beyond possible misconception. I say then, first, that I have
not post-dated the interpretation of the Westminster Assembly as
the true one, and that I have not asked any one to commit him-
self to a denial of a pre-Adamite world in all forms. It may very
well be that the science of Bible-exegesis is not jei dispassion-
ate and mature enough on this point to authorize us to commit
ourselves finally to atnj exposition of it, as I am very sure that
;such a final decision is not at all essential to our defence of the
integrity and supreme authority of revelation. And it may
also be true, that the inquiries and conclusions of geology are not
yet mature enough for it to venture on the construction of a
scientific theory on that point. I say, secondly, that if the sup-
position be made for argument's sake, that tlie interpretation of

Vol. III.— 12.

178 THE CAUTION AGAINST ANTI-CHPJSTIAN SCIENCE

tlie Westminster divines turned out some day to be tlie onlv
scriptural one — the onlj one faithful to the inspired text — then
my principles would still enable me to uphold the fidl authority
of my Bible, reasonably, consistently, and philosophically, not-
withstanding the seeming, natural analogies for an older date of
the world. Note, dear reader, that I do not make that supposi-
tion, and I have no craving to do so. But let us, for argument's
sake, look at it, as one may surmise it to return upon us. Sup-
pose, 1 saj, that after all the pros and cons, friends and enemies
of Moses' inspiration should settle down to this conclusion that
his language can in fairness mean only what the Westminster
divines supposed, viz., that there was no pre-Adamite earth at
all. Let us suppose that, while honest reverence led believers,
like Dr. Woodrow and me, to this conclusion, that all the "scien-
tists" had also settled down to the same, so far as to say, dis-
dainfully, " Your Moses obviously can mean nothing but that,
if he means anything ; and it is, therefore, we reject him totally."
Let us also represent to ourselves by what plausibilities a j^ersou
who, like Mr. David N. Lord, holds this view, would support his-
assertion, that to this issue the universal opinion must come at
last. He would remind us that the great body of Christians
certainly understood Moses so, while unbiassed by the stress of
this ereolosrical view : that while a few of the fathers and the Be-
formers understood Moses differently, yet the new interpretation,
as he would call it, was, in fact, suggested and dictated by that
geological stress, which was a little suspicious ; that the Chris-
tian geologists, when driven by that stress, are vacillating and
contradictory in their exegesis, which is again suspicious ; that
the Westminster divines, while probably very poor geologists,
were exceedingly 'able and faithful expositors ; and especially
that Iloses" enemies are coming more and more ojmihj to the jKtsl-
tion, that no such new interpretation can save his credit for in-
spiration. Our imaginary expositor certainly has the facts with
him on this last point. The tone of the scientific infidels is
changing in this direction manifestly. Formerly they studied
decency, and professed to be quite obliged to the Pye Smiths
and Chalmers, who saved the consistency of the venerable Book
with their science by means of the new interpretation. But now
their animus is very different. They disdain to trouble them-

CBITICISED BY DR. WOODEOW. 179"

selves about these old literary remains of " Hebrew barbarians"
and ignoramuses. No sense placed on them is of any import-
ance to the scientific mind. Let the Westminster sense be the
true one — which they think is most probably the only consistent
one — for the man who is a fool enough to believe in the docu-
ments, these "scientists" easily disencumber themselves by
kicking the whole aside as rul)bisli. Such is Huxley's mode, for
instance.

Suppose now, for argument's sake, that we should at last be
all compelled to settle doA\'n upon the Westminster construction.
Then I, from my position, could still save my Bible, and do it
consistently. Dr. Woodrow could not. I could say, this Bible
is established by its own impregnable, independent evidences,
moral, prophetical, historical, miraculous, to be a competent and
credible witness to the supernatural agency of an Almight}* Crea-
tor. I could say this omnipotent agency is competent to any
result whatsoever. I could bring in my position, that in such a,
case the divine testimony logically supersedes the circumstantial
evidence for a natural hypothesis, no matter how plausible ; and
my conclusion would not be superstition, but true logic and true
science. If the unbelieving geologist thrust at me his difficulty
about the seemingly ancient fossils, I could say, first, that the
Divine Witness does not stand in need of an explanatory hypothe-
sis from man to entitle him to be believed. I should say, sec-
ondly, that it was always credible that Infinite "Wisdom might
find a motive, and Infinite Power a means, to effectuate results
very unaccountable to my mind. It might be, for instance, that
this Omnipotent and Infinite Wisdom, working during the six
days, and during the long antediluvian years, during the flood,
and during the years succeeding, in times and places where there
Avas no human witness, saw fit to construct these strata, and to
sow them with vegetable and animal life with a prodigal profu-
sion now unknown ; and to hurry the maturing of strata, and the
early death and entombment of these thronging creatures, with
a speed very difi'erent from the speculations of geology ; and all
for profound motives good to his infinite wisdom, but beyond my
weak surmises. I might also add that possibly this is what rev-
elation meant, v/hen it said (Gen. i. 20) : " God said, let the waters
bring forth ahuiidojitbif'' ett'.. I might point to the fact, that such

180 THE CAUTION AGAINST ANTI-CHRISTIAN SCIENCE.

a divine working would not be wholly unwonted; tliat, for in-
stance, lie causes thousands of embryos of animal life to be pro-
duced and to perish without their proper development, for one
that grows; that he sows the earth prodigally with Te;^etable
germs which, if they ever sprout, sprout only to perish ; that he
sheds millions of rain-drops, such as are adapted by nature to
w^ater the herbs upon the barren wastes of ocean ; that he gives
to millions upon millions of flowers in the wilderness, destined
only to be cropped by the irrational brute, the same aesthetic
arrangement of color, shape and perfume which he has conferred
on the flowers] of our gardens, for the purpose of giving to ra-
tional, observing man the thrilling pleasures of taste. Why this
seeming prodigal waste ? It is no duty of mine to account f ( ir
it. But God acts so ! So, if he had told me that he had done a
similar thing at the world's creation, I should be ready to believe
it. But I should heUece it on tJte authority of ^God's e:i' press ten-
timony, not on the strength of a mere hypothesis mid a set of anal-
ogies tvhich I have just descrihed.

I repeat again, I have no mission at this time to assert this
Westminster construction of Moses as the only true one. It may
be asked, why, then, do I argue its possibility? Why did I, in
my former arguments, seem to imply that this might be the issue
between the Bible and science ? I answer : because I wished to
illustrate the full value of this saving principle, by showing how,
even in that aspect of the debate, it would defend us against infi-
delity.

And now I close. I beg the reader's pardon for detaining him
so long, excusing myself by the honest plea, that my chief object
is, not the vindication of any poor credit I may personally have,
but the exposition of vital principles, which will, sooner or later,
be found precious to all Christians. As against my rigid critic
my purpose has been solel}' defensive ; and if my haste or care-
lessness has let slip one word which, to the impartial reader,
savors of aggression or retaliation, I desire that word to be
blotted from memory. Kone can accord to Dr. Woodrow more
fully than I do the honor of sincere devotion of purpose to the
truth; or can join more cordially than I do in the wish that he
may soon return home wdth recruited energies and prosperous
health, to the work of defending truth.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF DR. BLEDSOE.^

WE have a long score to settle Avitli Dr. Bledsoe. Some-
tliiug more than twenty years liaye elapsed since we no-
ticed, in two critiques, his great work, then newly published,
TJte Theodicy This dogmatic and spirited book, as we then
showed, has for its key-note the Pelagian doctrine, that, in con-
sequence of the self-determination of the rational will, omnipo-
tence itself cannot efficaciously control a soul without destroying
its freedom. And the great " theodicy," or yindication, of Dr.
Bledsoe, for God's admission of sin into his uniyerse is, that lie
could Hot lidp it. These strictures Dr. Bledsoe resents in his
Iievleio of January, 1871 ; and he has followed this rejoinder uji,
in the succeeding numbers noticed, with attacks on Calvinism
and applications of his philosophy to two or three other import-
ant points in theology. To understand these, a knowledge of
his personal history is needed.

Dr. Albert Taylor Bledsoe, a native of Kentucky, an alumnu.'^
of the Military Academy of West Point, became a minister of
the Protestant Episcopal Church. But in a short time his bold
and independent mind saw that the standards of that church
indisputably teach Calvinism, and also baptismal regeneration,
and the eternal damnation of unbaptized infants dying in in-
fancy. Incapable of the mental chicanery which reconciles so
many men to insincere or formal professions, he frankly demitted
his clerical function and went into the practice of law, which he
pursued with distinguished success at Springfield, 111., for a few

' Appeared in the Southern Presbyterian EevuiC, October, 1876, revie-wiug
I. The Sufferings and Salvation of Infants, and Rcvieicers Remeired, being Dr. Bled-
soe's rejoinder to the strictures of the Southern Presbyterian Review on his Thto-
dicy. Southern Review, January, 1871. II. History of Infant Baptism. Southern
Review, April, 1874. III. Tlie Southern Review and Infant Baptism. Southern
Review, S\\\y, 1874. IV. The Suffering and Sidvation of Infants. Southern Re-
vietc, January, 1875. V. Infant Baj)tisni and Salvatioti in the Calvinistic System.
By C. P. Krauth, D. D. VI. Our Critics. Southern Review, October, 1875.
VII. The Perseverance of tlie Elect. Southern Review, January, 1S7G.

181

182 THE PHILOSOPHY OF DR. BLEDSOE.

jears. But seeking more congenial pursnits and associates, he
ilien became a tlistinguislied Professor of Mathematics, first in
the" Uniyersity of Mississippi, and then in that of Virginia.
X^pon the formation of the Southern Confederacy, its needs for
military knowledge in its seryice prompted him to resign his
chair and take the post of Assistant Secretary of War. Leaying
this post, he went to Europe, and deyoted the remaining years of
the war to the literary defence of Confederate principles, and to
extended studies. After the return of peace, he founded, first
in connection with another gentleman, the Sou titer n lievien', a
well known quarterly, which, like the starry sphere sustained
upon the shoulders of Atlas, has been chiefly borne upon his
sturdy arms. A few years ago Dr. Bledsoe, after haying long
held, under protest as to some of her doctrines, the attitude of
a layman in the Protestant Episcopal Church, joined the
Methodist Episcopal Church, and resumed his clerical function,
though without assuming any pastoral relation. His Jicview was
soon adopted by the General Conference of the Methodist
Church South, as their litera-ry organ, though not without dis-
sent on the part of leading members. Since that adoption. Dr.
Bledsoe has seemed to add to his former praiseworthy mission
of defending sound opinions and faithful history in ethics and
politics, the more special one of exposing and correcting what
he deems the enormities of Calyinism. His first onset possessed
all the zeal of a new recruit. Subsequent researches haye shown
him something to admire in some Calyinists ; and he now an-
nounces it as his chosen task to discover the common ground
which "Wesley dimly groped after, upon which sincere Calyinist
and Arminian may meet in a code of doctrines at once evangeli-
cal and soundly philosophical.

Convinced as we are that this triumph is impossible for mor-
tal man, we yet admit that the peculiar doctrinal code of Wesley
and Watson is, in some important respects, a retiirn towards the
truth from the worse extremes of early Arminianism. It is, per-
haps, the very closest approximation to the truth which can be
made by evangelical minds still unfortunately infected with the
7:ocozov e<f~Joo^, of the equilibrium of the rational will. To us it
appears clear that the Wesleyan creed contains far more of God's
truth than the New Haven theology. Wesleyanism teaches, in-

THE PHILOSOPHY OF DR. BLEDSOE. 183

■deed, that tlie bondage to native depravity is in part relieved
Tinder Christ, and that the sinner's will is now restored to such
■equilibriur/i as to be able to cooperate with God's grace in the
spiritual acts of repentance and faith. But the Wesleyan admits
that the depravity, as inherited from Adam, is total, until retrieved
by " common sufficient grace." The semi-Pelagian of New Eng-
land denies total depravitj^ and ascribes to man, by nature, an
ability of Avill to all spiritual good. The Wesleyan does, indeed,
teach a imiversal atonement for the sins of all the race. But he
holds to a true vicarious satisfaction for guilt ; while the New
Haven divine denies this vital truth, and invites us to rest our
hope of pardon upon some Socinian device of an exemplary suf-
fering by Jesus. The "Wesleyan claims that, by virtue of "com-
mon sufficient grace," all sinners have ability of will to embrace
Christ; but he teaches that it is a "grace," a redemptive purchase
of Calvary, and not a natural endowment of fallen souls, which en-
ables dead sinners to perform the living acts of faith and repent-
ance. He holds against the Scriptures, that God was moved by
an eternal foresight of believers' faith and holy obedience, to
predestinate them to life ; but he, at least, holds that God has in
this way a personal, infallible and eternal predestination, which
the New Haven divine refuses to accept. It is to us a pleas-
ing thought, that multitudes of the adherents of Wesley grasp
with a sanctifying faith these saving truths, while they quietly,
and perhaps unconsciously, drop these unscriptural excrescences
which their great teacher attached to them in the vain hope of
bending God's word to his unfortimate philosophy, and thus
these excellent people really build their hopes upon grace, and
grace alone. These rudiments of vital truth are practical to them ;
the excrescences fortunately remain unpractical.

Dr. Bledsoe is perspicacious enough to see the vital connec-
tion between the theory of free agency and the doctrines of
grace. Hence he tells us that he has made the great work of
Edwards on the Will the study of years. One of his chief works
has been an attempted refutation of Edwards' doctrine of the
moral necessity, or certainty, of our volitions ; and the opposite
view of self-determination is continually asserted and expounded
by Dr. Bledsoe as the corner-stone of all his speculations. He
is too shrewd to adopt the old Arminian formula, that the will

184 THE PHILOSOPHY OF DR. BLEDSOE.

determines itself to clioose ; or tlie modern form of the lieres}^,
that vohtion is an uncaused event in the world of spirit. He
admits the first principle, "Nothing arises without cause." But
says he : the mind itself is simply the cause of its own volitions.
Motives are, indeed, connected with volitions, as their necessarj''
occasions, bat not as their efficients. The action of intelligence
and sensibility, the presence of motives in the mind — all these,
he admits, are the conditions f<ine qua non under which acts of
choice take place ; but still it is the mind itself, and that alone,
which is the efficient or true cause of volition. And in thi»
assertion he places the very being of our free agency and respon-
sibility.

Now this is more adroit than the old scheme demolished by
Edwards ; for it evades the most terrible points of Edwards' refu-
tation. As Dr. A. Alexander has admitted, there is a sense in
which, while the will, in its specific sense as the faculty of choice,
is not self-determined, we intuitively know that the soul is self-
determined, and that therein is our free agency. But still the
scheme of Dr. Bledsoe is the opposite of Dr. Alexander's, and is
but the same Arminian philosophy in a new dress. When Dr.
Bledsoe says that the mind is the true cause of all its own voli-
tions, he means that this mind causes them contingently, and
may be absolutely in equilihino while causing them ; he means
that the mind does not regularly follow its own strongest judg-
ment of the preferable when acting deliberately and intelli-
gently ; he means to deny the efficient certainty of whatever in
the mind produces volition ; he means to apply his theory of
the will to the very results in the theology most characteristic
of the semi-Pelagianism, or, even worse, of Pelagianism. It is
to this philosophy he appeals to justify an omnipotent God in
permitting sin, simply because he could not help any sinner's
transgressing who chose to do so ; to argue the necessity of syn-
ergism in regeneration ; to deny the sinfulness of original concu-
piscence.

This novelty of Dr. Bledsoe's statement of the old error does
not require a re-statement of the impregnable argument b}^ which
the certain influence of the prevalent motive has been so often
established. The well-informed Presbyterian reader M'ill not
need this repetition. For such a one, the whole plausibility of

THE PHILOSOPHY OF DR. BLEDSOE. 185

Dr. Bledsoe's argument is destroyed by simply pointing out two
of its omissions. He speaks of the presence of motives in the
mind as conditions sine qua non of volition, and yet denies tlieni
causative efficiency. But lie has failed to perceive the essential
difference between sensibility and desire, between the passive
and the conative powers of man's soul, and between the objec-
tive inducement and the subjective motive. For this confusion,
as for the apparent weakness in our demonstration, he and we
are indebted to the sensualistic philosophers. Were Dr. Bledsoe
reasoning with Hobbes or Locke, his refutation would be sound.
Were it true that there is nothing in the mind but sensations,
and the reflex modifications or combinations thereof ; that sense-
impression is the ;r^^y of mental aiTectious ; that the presence of
the object necessitates the nature of the impression, and the na-
ture of this passive impression on the sensibility necessitates
the nature of the reflex appetency ; and this, in turn, necessitates
the volition ; then man would be a sentient machine, and his free
agency would be gone. The sinful volition of the sheep-stealer,
for instance, would be as much the physical result of the sight
of the sheep, as pain over the skull is the involuntary result of a
blow with a bludgeon. But must Presbyterians forever adver-
tise the Arminians that Hobbes is not their philosopher ? We
now again notify Dr. Bledsoe, that we surrender that scheme of
necessity to his devouring sword. Let him demolish it as fast
as he pleases. Dr. Alexander has given him a proof much sim-
pler and shorter than any of his o^xu, that objective inducement
is not the efficient of any deliberate and responsible volition.
It is found in the obvious fact, that the same object, the same
sheep, for instance, is the occasion of opposite volitions in the
sheep-stealer and the honest man. But were the sheep cau^^e of
volition in each case, "like cause should have produced like
effects." But let us pass now from objective inducement to sub-
jective motive, from the passive impression on the sensibility to
the conscious, active, spontaneous appetency; and it needs no
arcrument other than our own consciousness to convince us that
deliberate volition always does follow subjective motive ; or that
the choice will infallibly be according to the soul's own subjec-
tive, prevalent view and appetency. The stray sheep did not
cause the thief to purloin, nor the honest neighbor to restore it

186 THE PHILOSOPHY OF DR. BLEDSOE.

io its owner's fold. Biit subjective concupiscence, wliose action
was occasioned by tlie siglit of the animal, caused the one man to
steal it; moral love for "our neighbor as ourself" caused the
honest man to restore it. Let Dr. Bledsoe make full allowance
for this distinction, and he will attain to what he has not yet
reached, amidst all his studies — a clear understanding of the
Calvinistic and Bible philosophy of the will. And here we can
see in what sense Dr. Alexander could justly admit, that, while
the faculty of will is not, the soul is, self-determining. Motive,
which is the uniform efficient of rational volition, is subjective:
it is as truly a function of self-hood as volition itself. It is not
an impression superimposed on the spirit from without; it is
the soul's own intellection and appetency emitted from within.

The reader is now, we trust, prepared for seeing how fatal is
Dr. Bledsoe's second omission in his analysis of free agency.
He has left out the grand fact of ^jjerma^je/ji, subjective d'lsjyosl-
t'ion — the iiahitus, not consuetudo — of the Reformed theology.
"When we appreciate the flood of light which this fundamental
fact of rational nature in that theology throws upon the main
questions of free agency and morals, and when we see how
usually great philosophers, as Dr. Bledsoe, overlook it, we are
often amazed. He may rest assured it is the "knot of the whole
question." Let this simple view be taken. Grant that the soul of
man is self-determining. WJiere then are we to seek the regula-
tive lavj of its self-action? Ko agent in all God's creation works
lawlessly. " Order is heaven's first law." Every power in the
"universe has its regulative principle ; is mind, the crowning being
of God's handiwork, lawless and chaotic in its working ? This
regulative law of man's free agency is found in his disposition,
his moral nature. Though one being detects another's disposi-
tion ct2)osterion, by deducing it from his observed volitions, yet
in each spirit, disposition is a 2>'^iorl to volition ; for it is the
original, regulative power which determines what subjective
motives have place in the mind. These facts are so evident to
the consciousness that to state them is to show theu' justness.
How, then, are fi*ee acts of choice in the moral agent regulated ?
"We reply, not by objective impressions; for then the man would
not be free ; but by the agent's own permanent disposition.
There is the fullest, most efficient certainty, that the specific sul)-

THE PHILOSOPHY OF DR. BLEDSOE. 187

jective motive will arise according to the man'^ own disposition,
and that the volition will follow the prevalent motive. Does
Dr. Bledsoe complain that then it is man's disposition which
governs him ? I reply, Yes ; and nothing can be so appropriate,
because his disposition is himself; it is the ultimate, the most
original, most simple function of his self-hood.

From this truth it follows, that to control the disposition of a
creature is to control his motives and actions. When Omnipo-
tence, which first created, new-creates a sinner's disposition, al-
though we may not explore the mystery of that act, we see clearly
enough that God thereby determines efficiently the new line of
action. And yet free agency is not infringed ; but the uniform
law of connection between disposition and subjective motive, and
motive and act, so far from being tampered with, is reestablished
and ennobled. But on Dr. Bledsoe's philosophy, God possesses
only a contingent, possible power of occasioning, not causing,
some of the volitions he desires, by the ingenious and multiform
play of his skill amidst those feelings and impressions in the sin-
ner's soul which are only the conditions of the creature's self-deter-
mination ! Which of these is the Bible account of saving grace?

Amidst the many refutations wdiich he claims to have made of
Edwards' argument, we notice only one, because it will be found
to bear npon our subsequent discussion. Edwards has argued
the certainty of the acts of free agents, from the fact that God
certainly foresees them. This unanswerable argument Dr. Bled-
soe thinks he has neutralized. He admits the fact of God's fore-
knowledge of such acts. But he argues that, since this is the
foreknowledge of an infinite mind, it is the most unwarrantable
presumption in us to suppose that it implies such sort of causative
connection between the volitions and their antecedents as would
enable our finite minds to foreknow future events. He rebukes
the Calvinist with heat, because, from the fact of God's fore-
knowledge, he. presumes to infer the mode of it. Dr. Bledsoe
here travels precisely over the ground of the famous controversy
about scientia 'media, and asserts the same sophism which the
Jesuit and semi-Pelagian asserters of that error attempted to
■sustain. Admitting, against the Socinian, that God has fore-
knowledge of all the volitions of rational creatures, they sixp-
posed it to be a mediate and inferential knowledge. What did

188 THE rniLosoppiY of dp., bledsoe.

tliey suppose to be its viedluvi or middle premise ? God's-
knowledge of all the conditions tinder wliicli any free agent will
act being an infinite omniscience, his insight into the disposition
of each creature enables him to infer how that creature will act
under those given conditions. But Dr. Bledsoe ought to know
how often the demolition of this scheme has been completed.
For instance : this Jesuit theory makes this branch of God's
foreknowledge derived or inferential ; if we mistake not, Dr.
Bledsoe, with all sound theologians, believes all God's know-
ledge to be immediate and intuitive. Again, every one who is
able to put premises together must see that the middle term of
this scientia 'media virtually assumes that efficient connection be-
tween the agent's subjective disposition and motives, and his
volitions, which the Calvinist assumes and the semi-Pelagian de-
nies. We ask : how does God's insight into that agent's dispo-
sition enable him certainly to infer the action, unless as God
sees that this disposition certainly regulates the agent's free
choice ? Hence, Avlien the Jesuit cries that we must not mea-
sure the method of God's omniscence by our knowledge, he is
pretending to claim for God, as a mental perfection, a tendency
to draw an inference after the sole and essential premise thereof
is totally gone ! Is this a compliment or an insult to the di^dne
intelligence ? To every right mind it will be clear that, whether
a mind be great or little, it would be its imperfection, and not its
glory, to infer without a ground of inference.

But as Dr. Bledsoe does not seem to be aware that he is tread-
ing the oft-refuted path of the Molinist, so he does not seem to
understand the true nature of the argument from God's foreknow-
ledge to the certainty of the creature's will. AYe will expound it
to him. He will not deny that the Bible says God made man's
soul after his image, in his own likeness. AVhile God's intelli-
gence may, consistently with this fact, surpass man's infinitely,
the two intelligences cannot, while acting aright, expressly
contradict each other. Second, Dr. Bledsoe doubtless believes,
■^dth us, that the necessary intuition, "no eflect without its
adequate cause," is valid and correct. If this is the fundamen-
tal norm of the human reason, and was impressed on our minds
by a truthful God, it miist be because it was also, from eternity,
a principle of the divine reason. Now then, if the divine mind

THE PHILOSOPHY OP DR. BLEDSOE. 189

foresees an event as certain in tlie f\iture, he mast foresee it as
to be effectuated by some true cause; for ex. n'lh'do nihil is also
trne to God's thinking. Again : if a mind infinitely correct fore-
sees that a given event is certainly going to occur in the future,
it must be certainly going to occur. Is not this so true as to be
almost a truism? But unless there were someirhere, some true
cause efficient to j^^'oduce the certain occurrence of that event, its
occurrence would not be certain. Here is a case, e. g., where
God certainly foresaw that Nebuchadnezzar would freely choose
to sack Jerusalem. Then, the occurrence in the future was cer-
tain. Then, there must have been, somewhere, a cause efficient
to produce that choice. Where now will Dr. Bledsoe find that
€ause ? In fate ? Oh, fie ! In God's compulsion of the Assyrian's
freedom ? This is as bad as the other ! Or in the devil's com-
pulsion ? This is worse yet ! There is absolutely no place for Dr.
Bledsoe to rest, save in our good, Calvinistic, Bible philosophy :
that the efficient of Nebuchadnezzar's free volition was in the
power of his own disposition and subjective motives over his
own will. These lying open before God's omniscience, and in-
deed operating tinder his perpetual, providential guidance, he
thus foresaw infallilily the free volition which he purposed to
permit the wicked pagan to execute ; foresaw, because he pur-
posed to permit.

We are compelled, then, to return to the charge made in our
pages in 1856, which he so much resents : that he has mistaken
the nature of the creature's free agency ; that he has infringed
the omnipotence of God, and therefore that his "theodicy" is
nothing worth. As he complains of injustice in our presenta-
tion of his views, we now give them in his own words ( Theodicy,
p. 192, etc.) : "Almighty power itself, we may say with the most
profound reverence, cannot create such a bei ig (' an intelligent
moral agent,') and place it beyond the possibility of sinning."
"It is no limitation of the divine omnipotence to say that it can-
not work contradictions. To suppose an agent to be created
and placed beyond all liability of sin, is to suppose it to be what
it is and not what it is at the same time .... which is a plain
contradiction." His theodicy is, that in this sensa God tolerates
sin in his natural kingdom, because he cannot effectually ex-
clude it without destroving the creature's free agency.

190 THE PHILOSOPHY OF DR. BLEDSOE.

How can anr just miud fail to see that here we have a total
oversight and exclnsiou of that vital distinction, so "well know?";
in sound philosophy, beween certainty and compulsion ? Com-
pulsion would overthrow fi-ee agency ; certainty as to the natui-e
of volitions does not. Deny this, and you cannot hold that God
is indefectible without uprooting his freedom. Deny this, as
Dr. Bledsoe virtually does, and it becomes impossible for God
to answer a prayer for grace with any certainty ; or to regenerate
any sinner ceiiainly; or to promise certain glory to any elect
angel or to any redeemed man in heaven. Deny this, and it
becomes impossible for Jesus Christ to give us, in the infallible
holiness of his Person, a safe groimd for our tnist in him. We
forewarn oiu' Wesleyan brethren that this is biit blank Pelagian-
ism; it uproots all foundations of faith and beheving j)rayer;
and it flings a pall of doubt and fear over the assurance of angels
and saints in glory. We beseech them again to beware, and
not allow Dr. Bledsoe's zeal in assailing what they deem the er-
rors of Calvinism to seduce them to this fearful position, so
destructive of redemption itself. Happily Dr. Bledsoe is too good
a Christian to stand consistently to his OT\-n philosophy ; he con-
tradicts himself. On page IT-i of his Theodicy, he states that
" as every state of the human intelligence is necessitated," and
"every state of the sensibiUty is a passive impression," a "ne-
cessitated phenomenon of the human mind," as the sensibility
" may le dead" an almighty God may so act on this necessita-
ted intelligence and sensibility as to create new Hght and a new
heart in the sinner. On this remarkable concession we make
several remarks. First, Dr. Bledsoe here, in his misconception
of the real doctrine of the CaMnist concerning the Tvill, actually
goes into the extreme of the ultra-necessitarian; he talks just
like a follower of Hobbes or Spinoza. Second, he confirms our
charge of a failm-e to distinguish betv\^een sensibility and cona-
tion, as two opposite capacities of the soul, and between mere
objective iiiducement and subjective motive. In describing
God's agency in creating the new heart, he omits what is the
hinge of the whole change, fundamental disposition and its re-
newal. Hence, third, in quoting Dr. Dick as presenting a paral-
lel theorv of regeneration, he shows that he misconceives the
whole matter, mistaking the semi-Pelagian conception of " moral

THE PHILOSOPHY OF DR. BLEDSOE. 191

suasiou " for the Bible one of a quickening of tlie soul into
spiritual life. His theory vibrates between semi-Pelagianism and
fatalism. Nothing is easier than to show, from his position,
thab the man thus renewed of God would act under a fatal ne-
cessity. If "states of intelligence are necessitated," and "states
of sensibility are passive and necessitated," and God creates
light, and a new heart, through a necessary operation on these,
then there is an end of the converted man's free agencv; his
gracious state will consist in his actions being directed by the
two necessitated powers of intellect and sensibility. That is too
fatalistic for us Calviuists! Spontaneity is left out. Dr.
McGuffey was e"videutly correct in his verdict upon this book :
that its peculiarities arose from Dr. Bledsoe's not conceiving
aright the true nature of the Keformed theology he supposed
himself refutincr.

But let us bring his conclusion to a test surer than any philo-
sophy : the Word of God. He, speaking precisely of this de-
partment of his providence, his rule over free agents says :
" My counsel shaU stand, and I Avill do all my 2)l(iasarer " He
doeth his will among the armies of heaven, and the inhabitants
of this earth : and none can stay las hand, or say unto him, what
doest thou ? " " Therefore hath he mercy on whom he wiU have
mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth." The 110th Psalm,
glorifying the gracious influences of the Messiah's kingdom, says
that " his people shall be willing in the day of his power." So,
" his people never perish, and none is able to pluck them out of
his hand." " They are kept by the power of God, through faith,
unto salvation." But Avhy multiply proofs ? The effectual call-
ing of every soul " dead in trespasses and sin " is a proof that
God's omnipotence is able to renew every sinner. For the clear
teaching of the Bible is, that, while there are differences of de-
gree in the developments of native dej^ravity, the deadness to-
wards God is entire in every sinner, and " the carnal mind is
enmity against him." The whole activity of every natural man
is put forth for self-will and against godliness. Hence, were
not an efficient and invincible power put forth in the quicken-
ing of every believer, none would bo quickened. This divine
power which quickens one would be enough to quicken all he
rest, had God purposed to attempt it. The uniform tenor of

192 THE PHILOSOPHY OP DK. BLEDSOE.

tlie gospel teaclies us tliat we are all lost sinners ; and that wlien
one is saved instead of another, it is the divine mercy which has
originated the difference, not the superior docility of the favored
man. *' What hast thou that thou didst not receive ? "

Does the caviller, then, harass Dr. Bledsoe with the que. tion :
if God was as able to keep Satan in holiness as Gabriel ; if lie
•was as able to redeem Judas as Saul of Tarsus, why did he
choose the everlasting crime and misery of his creatures, Satan
and Judas ? It will be better for him, instead of asserting God's
benevolence at the expense of his omnipotence, to answer, with
us: "secret things belong unto the Lord our God." For the
pretermission of Satan and Judas, our God doubtless saw, in his
own omniscience, a valid reason. It was not capricious, nor
cruel, nor unfair; nor did God find it in his own impotency.
Had God seen fit to reveal that reason, every reverent mind
would doubtless be satisfied with it. He has given us no know-
ledge of it. Yet one thing we know, that this unknown reason
implied no stint of divine benevolence and infinite pity towards
the unworthy, in God. That we know, at least, by the fact
that God is so merciful as to give his only Son to die for his
enemies. There we rest satisfied. "What he doetli we know
not now, but we shall know hereafter." There our author, and
the caviller whom he vainly seeks to satisfy, had better rest
with us.

The second great task which Dr. Bledsoe proposes to himself
is the application of his philosophy of the will to the " suffering
and salvation of infants." In four of the articles of his licvkio,
cited at the head of this paper, he zealously impugns Calvinism,
and esx)ecially the Calvinism of the Protestant Episcopal Church,
as involving the damnation of d}ing ijifants. While we shall re-
sist with all our might this indictment against the Presbyterian
Church, justice requires us to say that in some of the positions
of these articles Dr. Bledsoe is correct, and by his candor lias
earned the approbation of all. Among these praiseworthy places
is his clear exposure of Lecky's Batlonalmn in Eurtype, for assail-
ing early Christianity on this suljject, when it is transparently
manifest that he knew not v/hereof he affirmed. He has here
convicted this defender of rationalism of a pretentious sciolism.
Another passage which deserves the earnest sympathy of the

THE PHILOSOPHY OF DR. BLEDSOE. 193

friends of trutli is that in which, he demonstrates that the Thirty-
jiine Articles, especially as expounded by the Homilies of the
Protestant Episcopal Church, are sternly Calvinistic, and where
he exposes the miserable shufflings of her Arminian and pre-
tended Low-church clergy around these doctrines and that of
baptismal regeneration. He shows that the mos't offensive
points in the whole discussion upon the destiny of dead infants
hav'i grown out of this wretched error of baptismal regeneration,
with the kindred one of a " tactual succession ; " and he convicts
the original Lutheran, along with the Anglican Church, of being
committed to the harsh doctrine of the eternal damnation of all
Tinbaptized children. But when, with Dr. Krauth, he attempts
to include the Presbyterian Church in the same charge, we must
wholly demur. A part of their proof is, that Calvin and the
supralapsarian divines use language implying that they believed
there are infants in hell, whose eternal perdition began before
they were old enough to commit overt sins ; and they remind us
that, among these extremists, was Dr. Wm. Twisse, the first
Moderator of the Westminster Assembly. It is a sufficient re-
ply that the Assembly did not endorse Dr. Twisse's supralapsa-
rianism ; that Presbyterians are responsible, not for the "UTitings
of any uninspired men called Presbyterians or Calvinists, nor
even of Calvin himself, but only for the creed which they have
expressly published as their OT\-n. If Dr. Bledsoe must judge of
the complexion of that creed by the literature of that age, then,
in fairness, he is bound to remember that our ablest and most
esteemed divines of that age, as of this, like Turretin, do most
expressly refute the ultraisms of Gomarus and Twisse. But he
thinks, with Krauth, that when our Confession (Chap. X., § 3)
speaks of " elect infants dying in infancy " as being redeemed
in some way by the blood and righteousness of Christ, the only
antithesis implied is of "non-elect infants dying in infancy."
To a mere surmise, a simple denial is a sufficient answer. We
assert that the fair and natural implication is, of elect infants
v:ho do not die hi infancy, but live to be adults. For, the sub-
ject of the previous proposition is the manner in which grace is
applied to rational adults. It asserts that, in their case, it is by
effectual calling. How then is grace applied to elect souls, i. c,
to elect infants called in the providence of God to die in infancy.

Vol. in.-13.

194 THE PHILOSOPHY OF DR. BLEDSOE.

who are not iu a rational condition ? This question the article
in hand undertakes to answer. Though these little souls be nob
in a condition to experience the rational part of effectual calling
and to exercise conscious faith, the omnipotence of the Saviour
can and does apply redemption to them also ; and in like man-
ner to djdng idiots and lunatics. This is the blessed truth here
stated, and it is the whole of it. The natural antithesis implied
is that between the elect soul that dies in infancy and the elect
soul that lives to be adult, and the different modes in which the
same redemption is applied to each. Does the objector cry,
" why then did not the Confession speak out plainly, and say
whether it supposed there was any soul, not elect, which ever
died in infancy ? " 'We answer : because on that question the
Bible has not spoken clearly. Let Dr. Bledsoe show iis the ex-
press place of Scripture, if he can. Herein is the admirable
wisdom and modesty of the Westniinster Assembly, that, how-
ever great the temptation, they would not go beyond the clear
teaching of revelation. "Where God is silent they lay their
hands upon their mouths.

Our assailants also think they find clear traces of infant dam-
nation in our Confession (as in the Thirty-nine Articles), where it
asserts that original sin is, even in the infant, true sin carrying
guilt, and making the soul obnoxious to the moral indignation of
God. Here they bring us, indeed, to the hinge of the whole ques-
tion. Is "concupiscence" real sin ? Or is it only an infirmity?
Does it involve guilt, even apart from the overt transgression to
which it naturally tends ? If it does, then it indisputably follows
that even the young infant is worthy of condemation before God.
But it does not follow tliat any dead infant is actually in hell ;
nor that we, who are convinced that " concupiscence is sin,"
should dispute the application of Christ's blood to atone for that
sin in every soul dpng without actual transgression. This obvi-
ous distinction Dr. Bledsoe quietly leaves out ; while he charges
that as v>^e hold concupiscence by itself is really guilty, we must
believe many infants are damned for it. He stoutly holds that it
is no sin at all ; and therein, as we shall show, commits himself
to the baldest Pelagianism. And here again, iu passing, we sol-
emnly caution ourAYesleyan brethren to take care how they per-
mit this champion of theirs, under the appearance of a zeal against

THE PHILOSOPHY OF DR. BLEDSOE. 195

a despised Calvinism, to betray tliem to an error wliicli "Weslev,
"Watson, and all their leaders reject. We testify to them, that
this doctrine of the Southern Revieto is not Wesleyan : it is Pela-
gian ; it is Socinian. It says (Jan., 1875, ji. 97): "Xew born
infants deserve no punishment at all, much less 'God's wrath and
damnation.' " P. 103 ; " The guilt of original sin " is only " sup-
posed," "founded only on the sand of human opinion." P. 105 :
" Before the time of Augustine . . . natural depravity was
looked upon by the fathers of the Church not as 'truly a sin,' but
only as mi;-ifort\ le." April, 1874, p. 353: "The omnipotence
of God himself cannot take away our sins, and turn us to him-
self, without our own voluntary consent and cooperation." Da
not Wesley and Watson teach that there is an original sin de-
rived by fallen man from Adam, which is so truly sin as to Heed
and receive the propitiation of Christ's blood offered in a sacri-
fice of universal atonement "for every man ?" Do they not teach
that this original sin also necessitates the redemptive gift of
" common, sufficient grace," purchased l)y Christ's blood, and
inwrought l^y his Spirit, to relieve, in the common, unrenewed
sinner, the bondage of the will, and lift him again to the power
of self-determination for gospel acts ? Surely this doctrine and
Dr. Bledsoe's are at dagger's points ! Again, according to him, a
dying infant, not being a sinner, has no need of a Saviour in the
gospel sense. It is not redeemed by Christ, but only helped in
some such sense as a physician who eases its sufferings. It is
not pardoned ; for it has no " true sin " to be pardoned. It cannot
be renewed ; for, according to Dr. Bledsoe, it needs no renewal;
and if it did, could in no possible way receive it, since "the om-
nipotence of God himself cannot turn it to itself without its own
voluntary consent and cooperation." But the dying infant has
not sense enough to give that voluntary consent. Hence, when
ransomed parents reach heaven, their glorified little ones will
have no part Avith them in "the song of Moses and the Lamb."
When Christ blessed little children, claiming them as subjects of
his "kingdom of heaven," he was mistaken ; for that kingdom is
the one which he purchased with his blood. No infant should
be baptized. The water represents the blood and Spirit of Christ
cleansing srnners from guilt and corruption. But, according to
Dr. Bledsoe, they are not real sinners, have no guilt, and instead

196 THE PHILOSOPHY OF DK. BLEDSOE.

of needing a renewal of their corruption, are only laboring under
a " misfortune." Why he should hold to infant baptism it passes
our wit to conceive. In one place he says he has a reason for
baptizing them; but we have not been able to find the place
where he has condescended to state it. Now, for v^liat does the
Methodist church haptize infants f Does she do it, like Pelagius
and the Papal priests, to deliver them from a Utah us of eternal
natural blessedness ; or to signify their deliverance from sin and
wrath? Let its standards and ritual answer. Again we warn
our Methodist brethren ; they cannot afibrd to carr}- this doc-
trine : it is neither theirs nor Christ's.

We also justly complain of Dr. Bledsoe for certain passages
in which he endeavors to involve Presbyterians in od'naa for
this solemn and awful fact of original depravity, which they did
not invent but sorrowful!}' recognize as a great reality. His
language is worthy of a cavilling Lecky, or of a Universalist.
He speaks ironically of "innocent little babes" condemned by
a God of love to cruel and everlasting torments, only because
Adam chose, some thousands of j-ears ago, to eat an apple. He
should know that this is unfair ; for no Calvinist ever ascribed
any imputed guilt of Adam's first sin to any posterity of his
which was innocent of all subjective depravity. Our Confes-
sion says that "original sin" is, in all, true sin, and carries true
guilt. But it defines original sin as including not only the guilt
of Adam's first sin, but always inward corruption also. Dr.
Bledsoe afi'ects to draw a contrast between the earthly parent,
though a sinner, loving and cherishing the smiling babe, and
the Calvinist's God, though holy, hating and damning it. Does
he not know that this is precisely the song of cavilling Univer-
salists? He professes to believe that God will certainly j)unisli
our adult sinful children in hell, if they refuse to repent. But
does not the Christian parent cherish and pity that adult im-
penitent child in any hour of his helplessness, as he did the
infant? To any one but a Universalist the solution is plain.
Our children are bone of our bone. We are not the appointed
judges and punishers of ungodliness. God is that Judge. Hence,
while he discloses towards our impenitent children, in ten thou-
sand mercies, a pity far more watchful and tender than a pa-
rent's, yet when he assumes his rightful judicial function, he

THE PHILOSOPHY OF DR. BLEDSOE. 197

conclemns each man according to liis deserts. He is a Euler
" both of goodness and severity."

Biit to return. The Bible teaches that inherited depravity of
nature is, apart from actual transgressions, truly sin, as such,
involving guilt, and therefore obnoxious to the righteous wrath
of God, and to such penalty as his equity apportions to it.
Dr. Bledsoe thinks that inherited depravity, apai-t from actual
transgression, is not triily sin, involves no guilt, is only a "mis-
fortune," and merits no •\vi-ath or punishment at all. This is
precisely the issue between him and Calvinism. In giving it
practical form and extent we have another distinction to pre-
sent, which is of cardinal importance. It concerns that general
proposition which Dr. Bledsoe would also contest: that every
sin, being committed against an infinite God, is an infinite evil,
and so carries a desert of everlasting punishment. Let us, for
illustration, discuss this proposition as to a specific sin of a
rational adult. Many, in this instance, would deny it, because
they are so in the habit of estimating transgression as the civil
magistrate does, insulated from all its attendants and sequels.
Does the court, for instance, indict a man for murder? That
single act is considered by itself; and the court does not con-
cern itself with antecedent character, or with consequences, ex-
cept as they throw some light on the evidence. Now men con-
tinually deceive themselves by these examples, as though a heart-
searching God could or would judge sins against himself in this
partial and inadequate way. They seem to have before their
imaginations some such case as this: here is a man who has
truly and literally comi-iitted only one insulated sin against
God ; and God has this one act to judge, as expressive of no
antecedent moral state, as destined to have no repetitions, as
unconnected with any formation of evil habitudes in the agent's
soul, and as carrying no cpnsequence or influence upon his
immortal character or on that of immortal fellow-creatures.
Has God said that this one act, thus insulated, is by itself
w^orthy of eternal penalty ? We reply, we are ignorant of
any revelation on that question. For, in fact, such a case
never existed, and God will never have such an instance to
judge. It is impossible that it should arise ; were it possible
we do not profess to know what God would think of it. Every

198 THE PHILOSOPHY OF DR. BLEDSOE.

case which God has to judge is that, not of sin by itself, out
of a sinner; not of an act merely, but of an agent; and the
infallible omniscient mind will, of course, look at each act as it
truly occurs, in its whole connections with character, destiny,
and example to others. Here, for instance, a profane oath has
been uttered. God sees that this oath is, first, an expression of
certain prevenient sentiraents of wilfulness, irreverence, care-
lessness, and enmity in the mind of the swearer. Then, sec-
ondly, it iuA^olves certain inflviences for evil on spectators and
imitators, the evil tendency of which is to mde-spreading and
everlasting mischiefs. Then, thirdly, it strengthens the profane
temper and habit of swearing, thus involving the natural pro-
mise of a series of profanities continued forever. In a word, God,
as an omniscient judge, has to weigh the sinner as a concrete
whole, and to estimate each transgression as part, and index, and
cause, as well as fruit, of a disease of shi, a spiritual eating can-
cer, which is an immense evil, because invohdng, unless grace
intervene — and the sinner has no ciahn of justice to that rem-
edy— an everlasting mischief and criminality. Thus judged, sin
is manifestly an infinite evil ; it manifestly deserves an endless
penalty. One reason why a holy God punishes forever is, that
the culprit sins forever. The everlasting series of sins is the
fruit of the first rebellion. This is God's point of view. Y/hen
we argue thus, Ave do not appreciate those aggravations which
attach to any one particular sin, by reason of the majesty and
holiness of the i^arty offended, and tlie perfectness of his claim
of right to our obedience. It is well said by the Puritans, "To
have a little sin, one must have a little God."

Let us now apply this view to the case of a depraved infant,
standing, as yet, before the divine inspection, without actual
transgression. He has one sort of sin and guilt as yet, that of
his original sin. If that is real sin and real guilt, as we shall
prove, then a righteous divine judge will, and ought to, disap-
prove it as such, and to adjudge to it lohatever jjenalty is its fair
equivalent. How unanswerable is this! But the objector, when
we proceed to the question, how extensive that penalty may
justly become, preposterously argues as though this infant's sin
and guilt were to have no natural secpiel or increment. They
seem to imagine that somehow God continues to view him as not

THE THILOSOPHY OF DR. BLEDSOE. 199

growing up from a depraved infancy to a sinful manhood, and
to an endless series of provocations. But in fact God views liim
as one w^lio will grow into all that sin ; for this career is simply
the sure and natural outgrowth of his own corrupted free-agency.
The objector, with a strange hallucination, seems to suppose
that, if there should ever be, beyond the grave, a soul con-
demned for its infnnt depravit}- — just as v^e see all infants this
side the grave at present under condemnation for their infant
depravity — that first infant would be sinless of all save its initial
depravity. But, obviously, if there were such a case, that infant
would develop precisely" like tlie unconverted infants we see
around us every day, and precisely like them ivould continxie a
condemned soul, hecause it continued a simiing and an increasingly
sinful sold. Let the man who cries out against the "monstrosity
of infant damnation" drop these absurd scales from his eyes.
Let him remember what it is that the Calvinist asserts. We do
not assert that there is a single case of an eternally damned infant
in the universe ; for we know Christ redeems infants, and we
hojje he redeems all who die infants. But we assert that were
not the infant guilt of depravity cleansed by Christ's blood in
the case of those who die infants, it would be just in God to
disapprove, judge, and condemn ih.em., precisely as toe actually
SEE HIM condemning the living ones in our mon households. Does
not Dr. Bledsoe believe, sorrowfully, that the condemnation of
some of these living ones may become everlasting? He says he
does. But on wdiat conditions ? On the conditions of growth
into adult sin and perseverance in impenitency. Well, were the
grace of Christ not applied to the soul of the infant that dies,
its condemnation w^ould also turn out to be everlasting on pre-
cisely the same conditions. Does Dr. Bledsoe think the eternal
doom of the adult unjust, who, beginning a depraved infant,
lived on in a life of voluntary depravity to a final imxDenitency ?
He does not. He regards it as solemn, fearful ; yet worthy of a
holy God. Why then this outcry, when the case of the non-
elect dead infant, if there were such a case, would be precisely
parallel ? There is, then, no use in this vain attempt to cavil
against God's condemnation of the guilt of original sin. It is
precisely what we see every day in the living infants of our OAvn
families. We see it in their ahenation from God, in their sick-

200 THE PHILOSOPHY OF DE. BLEDSOE.

nesses, mortality, and community witli us in the curse. "\Ve
liear it in the express word of God, that they " are all hj nature
heirs of wrath, even as others ;" that " all the world are become
guilty before God;" and that "the wrath of God abideth" on.
eveiiy son of Adam who has not believed.

But let us now return to the hinge of the whole debate. Is
that hahitus of soul which the depraved infant inherits really
sin, in such a sense as to carry guilt and to deserve penalty?
Dr. Bledsoe is constrained by his erroneous philosophy to say
no ; it is, so far, only an infirmity. We say his philosophy con-
strains this answer. For, first, if certainty in the influence of
subjective disposition and motive over volition were absolutely
inconsistent vdi\\ free-agency and responsibility, there would be
no real guilt in the actual transgressions which are the fruits of
such hib'dus, and, of course, no guilt in the parent state of soul.
Secondly, if self-determination and contingency are essential ta
free agency, in Dr. Bledsoe's sense, then no permanent and de-
cisive state of soul can have moral quality. There remains no-
thing to which moral quality can be ascribed, save acts of -oul.
This conclusion, which is virtually Dr. Bledsoe's, should have
opened his eyes to the error of his premises; for that "sin con-
sists only in sinful acts of soul," has always been the key-note
of the cry of ancient and modern Pelagians. Let us test the
question whether a depraved disposition is truly sin, by sound
reason and scripture.

The stereotyped argument in the negative is, "that nothing
can be sin which is involuntar}^ ; but the disposition cannot be
voluntary, being, as the Calvinists themselves teach, a j^rlori to
all the volitions it regulates." This plausible sophism proceeds
simply upon an ambiguity in the word "involuntary." In one
sense, an act or state is involuntary when the agent wills positively
not to do it, but is forced against his will ; as when one striving to
cleave to his support is yet forced to faU. The result, which is^
in that sense, "involuntary," is, of course, devoid of moral qual-
ity, and blameless. The other sense is, when an act or state of
soul is called involuntary because it did not result from any ex-
press volition. In this sense, that which is not the result of an
intentional volition may have moral qiiality, and lie criminal.
An envious man may so think of his innocent enemy as to have

THE PHILOSOPHY OF DR. BLEDSOE. 201

envy excited, by reason of an involuntary train of association ;
yet tliat envy is criminal. Let the ambiguity be removed by em-
ploying the -sN-ord spontaneous. Responsibility is coextensive
"with rational spontaneity. But the envy, in the case supposed,,
■was spontaneous. The disposition to ungodliness is sponta-
neous. The sinner cannot say that it subsists in his breast con-
trary to his will. No power makes him entertain it against
his wishes. It is as much a function of his selfhood, prompted
from within, as any volition he ever executes. It may be, then^
like the express volition, responsible and criminal.

We argue that native evil disposition is such, again, from the
testimony of conscience. Every man blames himself when h&
thinks dispassionately, for inclinations to evil not formed into
purposes. He would blush to have them disclosed to his fel-
low men. Why this, except that his moral intuition tells him.
his fellow will rightfully disapprove it ? If he perceives a mere
inclination in his neighbor to wrong him, he resents it, though
it be formed into no purpose.

Many sins of omission prove the same thing. Here, for in-
stance, is a well-dressed and self-indulgent man walking beside-
a stream. A prattling child falls into the water, and while he is
hesitating to infringe his bodily comfort and tarnish his goodly
raiment by leaping after it, the child is drowned. Here is guilt,
but there has been no volition : the lazy man can say with truth,
that positively he had not made up his mind to neglect the
drowning child. But he is guilty of breaking the sixth command-
ment. Now ever}^ one sees that it is to his selfish hesitancy the
guilt attaches. But hesitancy is a state, and not an act of soul.
We blame it in this case because it is the index of a selfish, cow-
ardly disposition.

This suggests a stronger plea. Every practical mind gauges
the moral quality of an act according to its intention. When,
for instance, a just judge would ascertain the guilt or innocence
of a homicide, he inquires into the intention. He knows that
"all killing is not murder." It is the malicious intent which
stamps criminality upon the act. This is but stating, in another
form, the admitted truth, that the subjective motive determines
the moral quality of the act, as it decides its occurrence. But it
is the natural disposition which regulates the subjective motive^

202 THE THILOSOPHY OF DR. BLEDSOE.

Hence, it is so far from being true, that morality resides only in
acts of soul — if it did not reside in the dispositions which regu-
late these acts and give them their quality, it would not be found
in the acts at all, it would be banished from the eai-th. In fine,
we appeal to that common sense of mankind which persists in
imputing moral merit or demerit to character as well as to ac-
tions. "What is character? Wherein does the thievish charac-
ter of the rogue reside, in the intervals when he is eating, or is
asleep, or anyhow is not thinking of his thefts? The only an-
swer is, it resides in his disposition and habitudes. We appeal
to that common sense which always regards cause and effect,
parent and child, as kindi'ed. When we see concupiscence,
in the words of the Apostle James, conceiving and bringing
forth sin, we know that mother and daughter have a common
nature.

This suggests to us the scriptural argument. Here M^e are on
solid and impregnable ground. Job declares that none can
bring " a clean thing out of an unclean." Does he not use the
term "clean" in the same sense in the parent and the child?
David confesses in the fifty-first Psalm that he "was shapen in
iniquity, and in sin did his mother conceive him ; " and this in-
born sinfulness he makes, along with the crimes which were its
fruit, subject of profound repentance. The fifty-eighth Psalm
declares that infants go astray as soon as they be born, speaking
lies ; their poison is as the poison of the adder, hereditary and
natural. Our Saviour tells us "that which is born of the flesh
is flesh," and on this he grounds the necessity of a new birth.
He tells us, " Either make the tree good and the fruit good, or
else the tree evil and the fi'uit evil." Does he not use the words
"good" and "evil" consistently throughout, of the soul's dis-
positions and its acts? The great apostle tells us that we were

all naturally " dead in trespasses and sins and were hy

nature children of wrath." Does anything that is not truly sin
excite the " -uTath " of a righteous God ? Lastly, God prohibits
concupiscence, saying, "Thou shalt not covet;" and in his own
inspired definition, b}' the Apostle John, makes discrepancy with
his laio the characteristic of sin. ' // d.if.aozla iazr^ if^ dvoaca. This
must include not being, as well as not doing, what God's law
requires.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF DR. BLEDSOE. 203

Now a mind tinctured witli nnscriptural pliilosophy will sup-
pose tliat it sees two stubborn objections to this Bible doctrine.
He will exclaim, "Tlie infant cannot reason. Intelligence is
necessary as a condition of guilt. It is as unreasonable to re-
gard this little creature in its cradle as criminal for a natural
state of soul of which it comprehends nothing, as though it were
a kitten." But we reply, it is not a kitten. It has w^hat the
kitten has not — a rudimental reason and conscience. ^Vliy
should not this be enough to ground a rudimental responsi-
bility? Let it be noted here, that w^e did not claim the re-
sponsibility for mere disposition to evil was as developed, or as
heavily criminal, as that for intentional and overt rebellion ; we
claimed that it is a true moral responsibility. It may be added
that, as a question of fact, there is nothing in mental science
about which it is more perilous to dogmatize than touching the
state of intelligence, and the degree of its development, in the
human infant. All we know is, that it cannot exercise the com-
municative faculty of speech, and that its consciousnesses are
not of such a qualitj' as to be remembered to after years. He
would be a rash man who woidd dare to assert, on these grounds,
that the infant human has no more functions of rational con-
sciousness than a mere animal. But aside from all this, we
make our appeal again to common sense. Do we not morally
disapprove the evil disposition of a bad adult, at such moments
as it lies quiescent, and is not provoking his own intelUgent con-
sciousness by acts of soul ? Do we not despise the thief as a
thief while he is asleep ?

Ah ! but, exclaims our opponent, this is because the thievish
disposition of this man is his own voluntary acquisition ; he has
created it, or induced it upon himself by a series of thievish acts,
intelligently and freely performed before. No being can be worthy
of praise or of blame for what he has not freely chosen. Here
we have, in this final objection, the last stronghold of the Pela-
gian philosophy. It is easily demolished by the same distinction
which separates the spontaneoiis from the 2^ot<itlvely involuntary.
No man is blameworthy for a defect which afflicts himself against
his will. Every man may be blameworthy for a moral state
which is spontaneous. That oiir disposition is spontaneous, we
have shown by a simple appeal to consciousness. We know that

204 THE rHILOSOPHY OF DR. BLEDSOE.

it is the most primary function of selfhood; vre cherish and ex-
ercise it of oiu" own motion, not compelled fi'om ■uathout; it ia
the most subjective of all subjectivities. And no^- that its being
coeval ■v\ith our rational existence is no ground for disclaiming
responsibility for it, we are able to prove by an adamantine de-
monstration. If a being is neither praiseworthy nor blameworthy
for his moral disposition, because it was native, and not taken to
himself by a subsequent act of choice, then Adam could not
have any hohness in Paradise, for God "created him upright."
Then Gabriel can have no credit for his heavenly hohness, be-
cause it was original. Then the humanity of Jesus deserved not
a particle of credit, because it was bom of the virgin " a holy
thing," by "the power of the Highest." And chieiiy, the eternal
God deserves no praise, because he has been eternally, natu-
rally, immutably, necessarily holy. This proof we croAvn, by
showing that the Pelagian theory of the rise of responsible char-
acter is a case of logical suicide. Say they : a man is justly re-
sponsible for his character, because he intelligently chose it for
himself. Then, we argue, that act of choice must have been a^
responsible one. But the moral quality of every vohtion depends
on that of its intention, /. e., of its subjective motive. If the
motive be non-moral, the act vdU be non-moral, and can conduce
in no way to a moral habitude. Thus, on this absurd philo-
sophy, the disposition must act and become a cause before it is
in existence. This result teaches us that when our analysis
of moral actions has led us back to the ruling disposition, we
have the ultimate moral fact. Beyond this we cannot go with,
our analysis. The original disposiiio?i, which, though not aris-
ing in an act of choice, is spontaneous, communicates the moral
quahty to all the vohtions it regulates, Jjecaiise it has moral qual-
ity in itself.

Xow then, if Dr. Bledsoe will admit the Bible doctrine, that a.
fallen infant is guilty for his sinful disposition, he will also ad-
mit with us, that a righteous God will hold him guilty therefor^
in preciseh' such a penalty as is equitable. And hence, did the
purpose of grace as to dying infants dictate God's leaving such,
a soul beyond the grave to bear that just penalty, and work out
its own ulterior character and conduct, the result would be pre-
cisely what we see in this life, where a fallen infant, beginning

THE rHELOSOPHY OF DE. BLEDSOE. 205

its career a culprit, and adding, of its own free will, a life of sin
and final impenitency, works out for itself an everlasting perdi-
tion. But -is it GoiVs real 2)uiyose to permit a single djang infant
thus to remain without the grace of Christ ? It is on this ques-
tion that the fact wholly turns, whether there are any lost infants.
And of this question, we presume Dr. Bledsoe knows precisely
as little, and as much, as we do. Neither of us hath a precise
" Thus saith the Lord." We presume that the silence of God
on this point of his gracious purpose is accounted for by this
trait of his revelations : that they are always intensely practical;
that he never turns aside to gratify mere curiosity; and so, as
ihere are no instrumentalities for us to use in the redemption of
dying infants, he has, in his usual practical fashion, remained
silent. But in one thing we agree with Dr. Bledsoe : water-bap-
tism is not an essential instrumentality for the applying of
Christ's grace to a dying infant, nor is the lack of it decisive of
its fate. To teach this is an odious, unscriptural Phariseeism ;
and, being unwarranted by God, is a brutal cruelty to bereaved
parents. We know that a multitude of dying infants are re-
deemed. To lis it appears every way agreeable to the plan of
redemption through grace, that, as dying infants never sanctioned
Adam's rebellion in overt act, so in the liberality of God, they all
enjoy union with the second Adam, without being required, like
us adults, to sanction it by overt faith in this life. Ko man can
prove from the Scriptures that any infant, even dying a j)agan,
is lost.

The next movement of Dr. Bledsoe's polemic, in the SotifJiei'ii
Jieview of October, 1875, and January, 1876, is against his own
Methodist brethren. Here we have, therefore, the more pleasing
task of spectators interested for fair play. One of the positions
which he has found for the meeting point of Wesleyanism and
Calvinism, of which he hopes to be the efficient, is his doctrine
of "the perseverance of the elect." To Arminians the doctrine
of "the perseverance of saints" has been very obnoxious. But
Dr. Bledsoe distinguishes between "the elect " and "the saints."
He avails himself of the modification of the doctrine of condi-
tional decrees, fully sanctioned by the greatest Wesleyan divines,
including the great founder himself and Watson. According to
these, while all predestination in God is grounded in his fore-

206 THE PHILOSOPHY OF DR. BLEDSOE.

siglit of men's free acts, tliere is a tliree-fokl divisiou of the ob-
jects. Those whom God foresaw would stubbornly reject Lis gos-
pel, he for that reason determined to leave to their doom. Those
"whom he foresaw would truly beheve and repent, he for that rea-
son determined to renew, justify, and adopt. The smaller num-
ber whom he saw would persevere in that faith until death, he for
that reason predestinated to everlasting glory. This view Dr.
Bledsoe adopts. One consecpience justly inferred from it is,
that he thinks a man may be a saint, a true, renewed behever,
without being one of the elect. Another is that a man may he a
true believer for a time, and be totally and finally apostate. A
third is that the elect must certainly and infallibly persevere in
a state of grace to the end, and be saved. Thus, while with
other Methodists he denies the perseverance of the saints, he
startles them by roundly asserting the infallible " perseverance
of the elect." This conclusion is obviously implied in the Wes-
leyan positions, as Dr. Bledsoe argues with resistless logic. If
God elect to eternal life only those v.'hom he foresees will perse-
vere in faith and repentance until death, then their perseverance
therein must be certain ; that is, //* God's forelKnowledge is cer-
tain.. This Dr. Bledsoe is led, of course, and correctly, to assert
in the fullest terms. When asked whether this is not virtiially
the Calvinist's doctrine of perseverance, he replies, Xo, because
while he holds the fact, he utterly dissents from the grounds of
the fact asserted by the Calvinist ; he ascribes the perseverance
of the elect to the foreseen determinations of their own free will ;
still holding fast to his Arminian ;roD azoj, that no degree of
grace from without could limit this self-determination without
destroying free-agency. Biit his speculation as to the " perse-
verance of the elect " leads him to other sound positions. He
is led to see, as he consistently must, that we should ascribe to
God a foresight of all things, including all free determinations
of created wills, absolutely infinite, eternal, infallible and immut-
able. Hence, he repiidiates with contempt the feeble notion of
Adam Clarke, that God forbears from foreseeing certain acts of
men. Dr. Bledsoe also recognizes the iron logic of the Calvinist,
that if the believer's faith and repentance are fruits of regenera-
tion, then these, as foreseen by God, cannot be the causal
grounds of his purpose to regenerate ; for this would represent

THE PHILOSOPHY OF DR. BLEDSOE. 207

the divine mind as making an effect tlie cause of its o^^•n cause.
Hence he concedes that in the act of regeneration there can be
no synergism; the cooperation of the human will begins there-
upon, in the consequent process of conversion. Is the reader
ready to exclaim, then Dr. Bledsoe is a good Calvinist ! So
have some of his own brethren exclaimed. But stay : his es-
cape is in claiming that God's regeneration produces no cer-
tainty of ^^-ill in its subject as to gospel acts ; it only lifts him, as
to them, into an equilihriuin of will ! Here we are tempted to
make three remarks. First : we thought Dr. Bledsoe, as an
Ai'minian, was bound to hold that '' common sufficient grace "
had done that much for the gospel-sinner before regeneration.
Secondly : how different is Dr. Bledsoe's regeneration from that
of the Bible, which St. John assures us is such that " whoso-
ever is born of God doth not commit sin ; for his seed remain-
eth in him : and he cannot sin because he is bom of God."
Thirdly : it seems as though, after all, the only barrier between
Dr. Bledsoe and Cahinism is the ecocoMu "of seK-detemii-
nation."

The Doctor also asserts that he does not believe God gives
preventing grace to all men under the gospel. For God's fore-
knowledge being infinite and infaUible, he foresees some cases in
which preventing gi'ace would be stubbornly resisted, and thus
become the occasion (not cause) of an aggravated doom. Hence
it is in mercy that God sometimes withholds it, that his kindly-
intended grace may not become the occasion of the poor sinner's
making his case worse than before. Here again we have two
words. First : how much difference remains between this doc-
trine and that Cah'inistic doctrine of preterition, which, under
the ugly name of " reprobation," Dr. Bledsoe so much abhors ?
Secondly: well does Dr. Granberry say of this, that it seems
to teach that God withholds the gi-ace essential to conversion
from all whom he foresees would fall. It is hard for us to see
how it teaches anything else. For has not God, according to
Dr. Bledsoe, a complete foreknowledge of everj^hing? Then he
foreknows every case in which converting grace is destined to be
slighted ; and of course the same wisdom and mercy which cause
him to withhold the useless gift in some cases will withhold it
in all. How does the reader imagine Dr. Bledsoe escapes ? It

208 THU THILOSOrHY OF DK. BLEDSOE.

is hj saving (October, 1875, p. 479) that God may give pre-
venieut grace in cases Avliere lie foreknows it will be despised,
"in order to demonstrate tlie malignity of sin, and cause
the universe to stand in awe of its deadening, destroy-
ing, and soul-damning influences." Really, it seems to us
that Dr. Bledsoe might just as ^Yell adopt, at once, the Cal-
vinistic statement, that God gives or withholds jn'ace "fur Ai^
oicn glory. ^''

These teachings, and especially that of the " perseverance of
the elect," awakened some of his brethren. Dr. Grauberry, the
excellent Professor of Practical Di^dnity in the new Tanderbilt
X'niversity, objected strenuously, lirst in the Chnstian Advocate,
and then in the Annual Conference of the Southern Virginia
Methodists for 1875. Here the two met in oral debate, and Dr.
Bledsoe has further defended his vie'ws in his Beview for Jan-
nary, 1876. It is with good ground that the honest Methodist
instincts of Dr. Granberry snuffed the taint of Cahdnism in this
doctrine. We have seen the corollaries, in part, to which it has
already led Dr. Bledsoe. They do not contain the unsophisti-
cated Arminianism ; they savor of the Westminster scheme. But
further, the doctrine of the " perseverance of the elect " in itself
viitually asserts the j^erseverance of saints, of some saints — the
hated dogma to the zealous Armiuian — for Dr. Bledsoe's elect
are a certain species of " saints." Worse yet ; both Dr. Bledsoe
and Dr. Granberry agree in holding that there is no essential
difference of grace in the saint who is, and the saint who is not,
elect. They must hold thus, or else we truculent Calvinists will
compel them to acknowledge oui' " sovereign distinguishing
grace." The difference then, between the non-elect saint who
falls, and the elect saint who cannot fall, is contingent and not
essential. So that Dr. Bledsoe forces us to admit the persever-
ance of certain saints who are virtually Hke other saints. This
is not old Methodism. But most of all, Dr. Bledsoe presents
us, in every case of the " perseverance of the elect," "s^dth an in-
stance utterly destructive of the Ai'minian philosophy. Hie
Arminian holds that certainty in volitions is inconsistent tcith free-
dom. This is his corner stone. But every persevering elect person
is a case of certainty of volitions coyisistent witJt freedom. Dr.
Bledsoe has thus placed Dr. Granbeny and himself helplessly

THE PHILOSOPHY OF DK. BLEDSOE. 209

between the jaws of the Calvinistic vise ; and -sve design to turn
the screw remorselessly. Let ns see what premises he has
given us. If God certainly foresees who "sydll persevere and
thereon elects them, they must be certain to persevere. Other-
wise God's foreknowledge would be erroneous. But unless the
volitions to cleave to the gospel were free, they would have no
moral quality, and would be no steps or means towards hohness.
Now any volition which is not foolish has a motive. If the gos-
pel motives, in these cases, are certain to produce the contin-
uance of gospel- voHtions, there must be an efficient connection
between motive and volition here. Yet the agent is free. This
is all the certainty, or " moral necessity," any intelligent Calvin-
ist asks in his philosoj)hy of the will. Dr. Bledsoe's doctrine
has given us our case.

And lastly, we now find the application of our discussion on
a previous page, of Edwards' argument from God's foreknow-
ledge to the " moral necessity" — or as we prefer to say, certainty —
of the volitions foreknown. The key of the argument is in the
great truth, that no effect is without a cause. "W"e know that
God knows this universal law, because he makes us know it in-
tuitively. Now, then, no event could be certain to occur in the
future unless there was to be also a cause efficient enough to
make it certainly occur. If, then, it is certain that any elect
person is going to persevere in gospel volitions, it can only Jje he-
cause there is, somewhere, a suitable cause efficient to produce them.
Now Drs. Bledsoe and Granbeny do not believe that this cer-
tainly efficient cause is in the Christian's will ; for they think
that is contingent, else, they insist, it would not be fi'ee. The
cause must then be in God's gi*ace. This then is the blessed
doctrine of " efficacious grace." This is Calvinism.

The question then remains in this attitude : Dr. Bledsoe says,
and proves, that the Wesleyan doctrines include the inference
of the " perseverance of the elect." Dr. Granberry says, and
proves, that this inference is Calvinistic. They both conclude
correctly ; and our conclusion from the whole is, that the Wes-
leyan theology, like a generous but over-fresh must, should work
itself clear by ripening into " the old wine well refined upon the
lees " of the Westminster Confession. Our sincere prayer is that
the venerable editor of the Southern Ileview, with all his younger

Vol. UL— 14.

210 THE PHILOSOPHY OF DE. BLEDSOE.

brethren, may find in every lionr of temptation, and iu tlieir last
conflict, the priceless support and comfort of " efficacious grace,"
Tliis intercession we ofi'er with a comfortable assurance, "being
(with Panl, Phil. i. 6) confident of this very thing, that he -^hich
liath begun a good work in them will perform it until the day of
Jesus Christ."

THE PHILOSOPHY OF VOLITION/

THE nature of free agency constitutes much the most im-
portant problem in the whole range of philosophy. Ir-
deed, it would be no exaggeration to claim for it an importance
greater than all the rest of philosophy together, after man's ra-
tionality is admitted. The connections of this problem with
theology are manifold and A^tal. As is one's philosophy of the
will, such, if he is a consistent thinker, must be his theory of
proyidence, of foreknowledge, of the decree, of original sin, of
regeneration, of the perseyerance of the saints, of responsibility.
The most momentous things to man, in all the uniyerse of space
and time, are responsibility, sin, penalty, and redemption. But;
one of the clearest of our intuitions tells us that free agency is
essential to a just responsibility, to guilt and merit, to reward
and penalty. What, then, is free agency? What are its real,
conditions? This must ever be the question of questions.

Dr. Bledsoe has seen clearly this fact; and hence all the dis-
cussions of his £xariii)iat(0)i of Edwards, his Theodicy, his de-
bate with the Southern Presbyterian Review, from 1871 to his
last thundering broadside, January, 1877, are virtual or actual
discussions of free agency. When we add the other fact, that,
no point in philosophy has been surrounded with more of con-
fusion, ambiguous definition, and prejudice, the thoughtful mind
will need no apology for our continuance of this yital discussion.
A special and practical reason exists for carrying it, in this case,
to a thorough result. This is the mischief which Dr. Bledsoe
is unconsciously doing among eyangelical Christians and minis-

' Appeared in the Southern Presbyterian Review, for July, 1877. Reviewing:
I. An Examination of President Edwards' Inquiry into the Freedom of the Will,
By Albert Taylor Bledsoe. Philadelplim: H. Hooker. 1845. 12mo., pp. 234. II.
A Tlieodicy, etc. By A. T. Bledsoe, LL. D. New York: Carlton & Porter. 1856.
8vo., pp. 368. III. Vindication of our PhiXoHophy. By the Eev. A. T. Bledsoe»
LL. D. Southern Review, Art. Y., January, 1877. Pp. 54.

211

212 THE PHILOSOPHY OF VOLITION.

ters. He lias been an Episcopal, and is now a Methodist
minister. He stoutly declares lie is no Pelagian ; lie considers
himself quite a Pauline divine. His theory of free agency re-
trenches some of the untenable logic of his school, and fi*ankly
admits some of the positions and arguments of the orthodox
philosophy. Especially does he teach his errors with an equal
vigor of thought and style and obvious integrity of purpose.
The sad result is, that he is forming the opinions of a multitude
of young Christians, and ministers eveu, in the Episcopal — a
Calvinistic — Church, to what will turn out, in their cases, bald
and poisonous Pelagianism and Socinianism. These young men,
scantily furnished, perhaps, in the history of doctrine and phil-
osophy, adopt Dr. Bledsoe's conclusions, unconscious that they
contain the very rudiments of those heresies, supposing them to
be new and safe, results of his original discussions. But they
wall, we fear, think too connectedly to adopt also the happy
inconsistencies by which Dr. Bledsoe arrests himself; and they
will be j)l^^iiged into deadly errors, which he, with us, will
lament. We are convinced thus, that there is nothing in South-
ern, or even in American, theological literature, more important
than a thorough adjustment of this debate.

Dr. Bledsoe's reply to our very courteous and measured argu-
ment of last October is delivered with unspeakable energy and
eloquence of invective. He professes to see in the provocation
nothing but imbecility and ignorance. But his readers are ask-
ing, " Why, then, this effort ? " Why should leviathan thus
"tempest the deep" to crush a minnow? Would he fill the
whole sea with bloody foam, unless the lance of his little as-
sailant had pierced consciously to his vitals? He complains
that his theory of free agency has been criticised without ever
having been read; that he is represented as holding exactly
what he repudiates and refutes ; that l)age and word have not
been quoted faithfully from his E-ramination of Edwards and
TJieodicy, to show what he really holds. Now, a sufficient re-
ply to this loud complaint would be to say that neither of these
u'orl'S was 'placed at the head of our critique; that we did not
undertake specially to discuss them at that time, but only to
defend ourselves and the truth from the aggressions contained
in the pieces which we expressly named. Is it not preposterous

THE PHILOSOPHY OF VOLITION. 213

that, wlieu a Tolummous wiiter is taken to account for his recent
dechiratious, he should claim a right to have works of twenty
years ago included ? But we stoutly assert, as we shall evince,
that our recent chastisement of Dr. Bledsoe's trespasses on Pres-
byterianism was not composed without just understanding of
those books. If there remains any appearance of unfairness, it
will be removed by remarking, first, that Dr. Bledsoe has, in
some cases, very causelessly mistaken his critic as meaning to
put propositions into his mouth as Dr. Bledsoe's own, when the
thing obviously designed was to show that Dr. Bledsoe's posi-
tions were obnoxious to certain absurd corollaries ; and, second,
that it may be entirely feasible for him to quote from his earlier
writings what is opposite to positions we do ascribe to him, he-
cante he so contradlds himself. But that is his misfortune, and
not our fault. He complains that we did not cite his own words.
We surmise that when we proceed to do this, and show that the
same contradictious remain, he will be hardly so well satisfied
as he now is. One bitter complaint is, that we charge the vir-
tual tendency of his scheme of free agency to be Pelagian when
it is not. We shall see. Another is, that we accuse him, in his
account of the rise of volition, of not seeing the significance of
subjective disposition in the matter; whereas, he claims that he
does see and teach all about it. We shall see whether he does.
Still another complaint is, that we charge him, in speaking of
motive, with overlooking the vital distinction between subjective
appetency and objective impressions on the passive sensibility,
which, he claims, he has most perspicuously separated. We
shall see whether he has. A fourth complaint is, that we make
him hold mind itself to be the "efiicieut" and the "cause" of
volitions ; whereas, he now wishes to be understood as holding
that "mind is not the eflicient cause of volition." We shall see
whose is the contradiction.

Chiefly Dr. Bledsoe seems to complain, because our review did
not again go back and debate his theory of the will. We will
endeavor to remove that ground of complaint also. Mere re-
joinders, sur-rejoinders, and replications upon personal and j)ar-
tial issues, are httle to our taste, and of little fruitfulness. We
presume that neither the Presbyterian nor the Methodist pul)lic
is much interested in that thesis which Dr. Bledsoe pursues with

214 THE PHILOSOPHY OF VOLITION.

SO niticli zeal and pleasure, viz., that liis critic is silly and igno-
rant. It is more important to settle the question, whether Dr.
Bledsoe's way of asserting the contingency of all responsiljle voli-
tions is any more A-alid than the old way, which, he admits, Ed-
wards has demolished.

Before we proceed, however, to this main object, Ave wish to
show the reader with how much violence our author is in the
habit of contradicting himself and the truth. Our purpose is
not so mvich to enjoy our reasonable self-defence against his
accusations, as to convince of the real incoherency of Dr. Bled-
soe's theory. He contradicts himself because the positions he
wishes to occupy are contradictory, and the candor and vigor of
his own spirit precipitate him into the pitfalls he has prepared
for himself.

Thus, Ave are much berated for representing him as holding
that the mind is the efficient or the cause of its OAvn volitions.
He tells us that he has asserted the contrary. The latter is per-
fectly true, both of his books and his Heoiew. Thus, in the
latter, p. 11 : " All . . . must admit this exemption of the mind
in willing from the power and action of any cause. . . . It is this
exemption which constitutes the freedom of tlie human mind."
And p. 20: "What he (Dr. Bledsoe) really denies is, that there
%8 anytli'mg, either in the mind or out of the mind, xolilcli pro-
duces volition^ This is clear enough. But in Section lY. of
the Examination of Edwards, and in the lieoiew, p. 16, he
finds himself face to face with the inevitable maxim, E-n nihilo
nihil; and he admits the absurdity of a change, either in mind
or matter, "Avithout any parentage AA'hatever." It is easy to an-
ticipate that the stress of his own common sense must precipi-
tate him into the opposite declarations which we ascribed to
him, and it accordingly does so more than once. Thus, on the
very page cited (16th), "Volition never comes of itself at all ; it
comes ofmind.^^ "Volition ahvays has its parentage in mind."
Is not a "parent" a came to its own offspring? On the same
page, he angrily declares he has not denied that " volitions haA^e
any efficient cause or antecedent ofanyl'ind." On p. 21 he de-
clares that original concupiscence, " caused " by Adam's fall, Avhile
not itself sinful, is the " soiirce " of all men's sin, and leads uni-
formly to sin. On page 14 he assures us that he, along Avith all

THE PHILOSOPHY OF VOLITION. 215

tlie advocates of free agency he ever heard of, has maintained
-always "that the onbid is the cause of volition." So also in his
Examination of Edwards, we find him saying, p. 47, " Under cer-
tain circumstances, the free mind will furnish a sufficient reason
and ground of the existence of a volition." Page 48 : "I do not
denv that it (volition) depends for its production upon certain cir-
cumstances, as the conditions of action, and upon the powees of
THE MIND." Page 71 : " It is true that President Edwards tells
Tis of those who ' imagine that volition has no cause, or that it
produces itself.' . . . But whoever held such a doctrine? . . .
I have never been so unfortunate as to meet with any advocate
of free agency, either in actual life or in history, who supposed
that a volition arose out of nothing, wdthout any cause of its ex-
istence, or that it produced itself. They have all maintained,
with one consent, that tJie mind is the cause of volition. Is the
mind nothing ? "

We now ask the candid reader, does not this last passage mean
that the mind is the producing cause of it ? Again, when Dr. Bled-
soe says that volition has "its parentage" of the mind, that de-
pravity is the "source" of all sins, has he not said in substance,
what in another place cited above he has said in words, that the
mind is the efficient cause of volitions ? Is not the cause which
produces a thing efficient thereof ? If Dr. Bledsoe desires to use
words without sense, he must excuse us ; we cannot follow him.
If he now means to say that his own words, "the mind is 'the
cause ' of its volitions," are meaningless, it is his only excuse, but
a very poor one. It is perfectly true that he does contradict
himself by stating with the greatest perspicuity, and by arguing
that volitions have no true cause, that they are not effects at all ;
that they are contingent as to all antecedents whatsoever. But
this — the stronghold of his philosophy of the will — is yet so utterly
incompatible with consciousness and common sense, and w'ith
his own admissions, that he cannot avoid declarations equally
emphatic on the opposite side ; he slips into them by the mere
force of nature.

Dr. Bledsoe complains again, that we do him great injustice
in saying that he, hke many other analysts of mind, has failed
to give proper weight to that decisive fact, the influence of dis-
position, or habitus, on volitions. And yet in the same breath

216 THE rniLOSOPHY OF VOLITION.

he glories in asserting that he does not ascrihe any important in-
fluence to that great fact. AYell, that is precisely what we
charged and now charge on him as a fatal error. And when we
come to test what he so modestly terms that " most careful, con-
scientious, painstaking, and elaborate discussion," in the 15tli Sec-
tion of his Exami)iatio7i , or 3d Chapter of his Tlieodlcy, in which
he impotently endeavors to dispute — what his own common
sense makes him in many places assert — that the mind's native
dispositions are, and must be, regulative of its volitions, we shall
show by tlie confusions and futility of that argument the full
justice of the charge.

He also complains grievously of our charge, that in discuss-
ing the efficiency of motive he fails to see and use the vital dis-
tinction between the objective inducement and the subjective mo-
tive. "\Ve now proceed to show that this our charge -is exactly
true. This is clearly betrayed by the manner in which Dr. Bled-
soe declaims about it, at this very place. {Iievieio, p, 42.) He
assures us that he understands it perfectly, of course ; for he pro-
ceeds to tells us, " this distinction has never been overlooked by
anybody." ..." We have certainly never known any man or
read any author who was so weak or so silly as to overlook such
a distinction." But it is a well known fact in the history of
philosophy, that the distinction between objective inducement
and subjective motive, which we have in view, and of which we
"Were speaking, has heen overlool'ed, and that hy all philosophers
of the sensationalist schools. Hobbes overlooked it; Locke
overlooked it ; so of course did Condillac and Helvetius ; so did
all the fatalistic schools. Yet, more ; their very princi]:)les ne-
cessitated that they should overlook it ; because, from their
maxim, N'Juliii intellectu, quod noii jpr'ius hi sensu ; in other
words, from their analysis of all subjective states of appetency
into mere reflexive modifications of states of passive sensibility
caused by the objective, they could not, as consistent thinkers,
hold or use the distinction. This is notorious. Now, the above
assertion of Dr. Bledsoe inevitably proves one of two things :
either that he does not apx>reciate that important distinction as we
hold it, or that he is ignorant of the ordinary history of philoso-
phy. And it is very vain for him to endeavor now to prove his
correct appreciation of the difierence between objective induce-

THE PHILOSOPHY OF VOLITION. 217

ment and subjective motive, by citing to us, as he here does,
sentences from his books, in which, wrapping both kinds of ante-
cedents together, under the common promiscuous name of " mo-
tive," he asserts of them all indiscriminately, that they are all
not efficients, but mere occasions of volition. That very mode
of assertion betrays the justice of our charge. But we shall not
rest it here alone. Sometimes it is hard to " prove a negative."
But one evidence in this case, of at least partial weight, is, that
the Examination of Edwards may be searched through in vain
for an articulate statement or application of the distinction.
But more than this : numerous passages imply its rejection. To
apprehend these, a word of explanation may be needed. The
sensational theory of the soul's powers, with which both English
and French psychology were so deeply tinged by the ascendency
of Locke, traced all mental modifications, whether intellective or
emotive, to the objective impressions. As with it all cognition
was empirical, so all emotion was passion. The very language
confounded the words. The outward impression on feeling was
regarded as the cause of the emotions which followed. In some-
what the same way as the blow caused the pain in the head of
the man struck, so they conceived that the pain caused the re-
sentment, and the resentment caused the volition to double tlio
fist and strike back. Now, if this is the whole account of the
emotions of this rational agent, his free agency is illusory. Be-
sentment efficiently determined the volition to hit back ; pain
from a blow caused the resentment ; the blow delivered by an-
other man caused the pain. Thus, while the man struck acts as
a sentient agent, he does not act as a self-determined rational
one. He is but a sentient machine, Vvdiose acts are remotely
but efficiently determined from without, not from within. The
theory of the causative efficiency of motive, thus expounded,
was a theory of fatalism. Such was that of Hobbes ; such that
of all consistent sensationalists, as well as of theological fatahsts.
But a more correct psychology supervened. Scholars grasped
the all-important truth, all along practically assumed in the phil-
osophy of the Bible, that the human soul has not only percipi-
ent faculties and sensibilities, but, a priori, constitutive pow-
ers of reason and appetency ; that in the emotive sphere of the
soul's action, these appetencies and repulsions were inherent,

218 THE PHILOSOPHY OF TOLITION.

subjective, and spontaneous ; not functions of passive sensibility,
but functions of subjective activity, whose spontaneous move-
ments are merely conditioned on, not caused by, the impressions
on sensibility. And they saw, what the Bible had intimated,
that it is these subjective desires and repulsions which are the
true motives (motiva) of vohtions. It is this vital distinction
which Sir William Hamilton makes under the terms sensibili-
ties and conative powers; and he (erroneously) claims to have
been the first to discriminate them clearly. One more impor-
tant truth remains. The rational agent's "conative powers" do
not move at haphazard; they have their regulative principle;
and this, in every case, is the agent's subjective native disposi-
tion, or habitus. In the order of causation, disposition is a pi'i-
ori to the operation of inducement, and is not modified by it.
It is not the pain of a blow which determines a given human
soul to be resentful, but it is the preexisteut resentful disposi-
tion which determines that man to resent a blow. It is not ap-
plause which causes the spirited young man to desire fame,
but it is the native, preesistent desire of fame which de-
termines the young man to regard applause as an objective
good. When an objective inducement becomes an occasion
of an act of soul, as, for instance, a forgotten purse, of a
servant's theft, the causative efficiency is not projected from the
gold upon the thief's soul, but from the thief's covetous desire,
as regulated by his evil disposition, upon the gold. This was
established in our article of October last. Now, then, from the
point of view of this Bible psychology, the rise of volition be-
comes intelligible. Our consciousness had told us, on the one
band, as against the sensationalist scheme of motive, that we
are free agents ; that in all our deliberate and responsible voh-
tions, our souls are self-determined. Our common sense and ex-
perience had told us, on the other hand, that such volitions can-
not be uncaused and contingent changes in the mind ; that the
very notion of a rational volition is of one for which the man
had a controlling reason ; or in other words, of one in which the
motive efficiently prompted. It is because this distinction be-
tween subjective motive and objective occasion of choice has not
been clearly held to, that nearly all the confusions in the argu-
ment have arisen. The gi'eat treatise of Edwards, while ou the

THE PHILOSOPHY OF VOLITION. 219

right side, is by no means free from this confusion. All the ar-
guments of Eeid — on the Active Powers — against the moral ne-
cessity of volitions, are occasioned by this confusion ; and they
have force, just so far as they are aimed against the sensation-
xilist view, which makes the passive sensibility the efficient mo-
tive. So, the whole force of Dr. Bledsoe's reasonings against
Edwards — so far as they have any force — is from this mingling
of the sensationalist theory of necessity with the true theory of
certainty, which views volition as the effect of subjective motive.
It is certainly true that Dr. Bledsoe blindly opposes both sys-
tems, the correct one and its sensationalist travesty. But the
question is, has he intelligently discriminated therein, and has
he seen the decisive consequence of that discrimination ? We
again affirm, lie has not; and we proceed to affirmative proofs
from his own works.

Thus, Examination of Edwards, p. 40, line 2, Dr. Bledsoe
says : " The strength of a motive, as President Edwards properly
remarks, depends upon the state of the mind to which it is
addressed." There is another fatal admission here, which we
reserve. Now, manifestly, Dr. Bledsoe, like Edwards, con-
founds motive with objective inducement. Their "motive" is
something which "is addressed to the mind." That tells the
whole story; it is the objective inducement! He argues in
Titter obliviousness that the real "motive" is not the thing
"addressed to the mind," but the subjective appetency deter-
mined by the "state of the mind" to which the object is ad-
dressed.

So, p. 75, line 7: "A mind, an object, and a desire, if j^ou
please, are the indispensable prerequisites, the invariable ante-
cedents to volition; but there is a vast chasm between this posi-
tion and the doctrine that the mind cannot put forth a volition
unless it is made to do so by the action of something else uponitr
Here, again, Dr. Bledsoe betrays the fact fatally that he does not
perceive what the Calvinist means by efficient motive. He thinks
that we mean the objective — the " something else " than the mind,
that is supposed to "act iipoii it." He is lighting blindly. This
passage also presents another proof of this : that, like so many
others in all his writings, it confuses together objective induce-
ment and subjective desire, as all alike not "causes" but " condi-

220 THE PHILOSOPHY OF YOLITION.

iiofis'' of volitions. Had lie seen tlie proper distinctlou, lie •would
never have spoken tlius ; lie would have said that the objective is
tlie one thing, namely, the condition only, and the subjective de-
sire is the opposite thing only, namely, the cause.

On p. 89, again, the author fails to apprehend the true doc-
trine in the same "way: "External objects are regarded as the-
efficient causes of desire ; desire as the efficient cause of volition ;
and in this way the whole question seems to be settled." That-
is to sav, Dr. Bledsoe has still no other apprehension of our doc-
trine than that of the sensationalist. He thinks that we think
desires are efficknthj caused by external objects! He has not
gotten out of the delusion that the desires which we hold prompt
volitions, are functions of the passive sensibility ; and this is the
doctrine which he opposes. And how does the reader suppose
Dr. Bledsoe designs to fight it ? By attacking the second link
of what he erroneously supposes to be the Calvinist's chain ; by
denying what ho grants every other asserter of free will, besides^
himself, has held ; by denying that such desires have any effi-
ciency as causes of volition ! Thus, p. 92 : "Our desires or emo-
tions might be under the influence and dominion of external
causes, or of causes that are partly external and partly internal ;
but yet our volitions would lie perfectly free from all preceding
influences whatever." Thus, it appears plainly, he is still in the
dark. For, we do not hold that our desires or subjectiTO emo-
tions are " under the influence and dominion of external causes.'*
We hold that they arise from within, are functions of the soul's.
own spontaneity, and efficiently regulated by the soul's own per-
manent /tahitus.

On p. 97, again, the same confusion appears. Dr. Bledsoe
asks, " Is it true, then, that any power or efficacy belongs to the
sensitive or emotive joai-t of our nature?" So, on pp. 99, 100,
Dr. Bledsoe cannot accept that law so beautifully expounded
by Bishop Butler, that while our passive impressions become
blunter fi-om habitual action {jyjiis^ietudo), our active principles
become stronger. What is his difficulty about it? He tells us
that he cannot see how, when the passive function of sensibility
is weakening, the effect thereof can be increasing. Still he is in
the same fog; he supposes our active desires to be mere func-
tions of passive sensibility. "We cro^vTi our proof with Dr. Bled-

THE PHILOSOPHY OF VOLITION. 221

«oe's concluding -words, p. 102 : " The trutli is, that in feeling the
mind is passive ; and it is absurd to make a passive impression
the active cause of anything. The sensibility does not act, it
merely suffers. The appetite and passions, which have always
iDeen called the 'active powers,' the 'moving principles,' and so
forth, should be called the passive susceptibilities. Unless this
truth be clearly and fully recognized, and the commonly received
notion respecting the relation which the appetites and passions
sustain to the will — to the active poioer — be discarded, it seems to
me that the great doctrine of the liberty of the -will must con-
tinue to be involved in the saddest perplexity, the most distress-
ing darkness."

It would not be hard to add many other proofs, as at page
182 (top), but they are superfluous. It is Dr. Bledsoe ^Yho is in
"distressing darkness." He has mingled together the functions
of conation and sensibility in inextricable confusion, and hence
can see no light. The very passage in the TJieodlcy to which
Dr. Bledsoe so confidently appeals to show that he does a2)j)re-
ciate the vital relations of native, subjective disposition, and of
cubjectivo appetency to volition, betrays an ignorance and blind-
ness about the whole truth that are simply pitiable. Does he
{Tlieodicy, pp. 173-4) distribute the powers of the mind into
"intelligence, sensibility and will?" Tes. But by "will" he
means exclusively here, not Hamilton's " conative powers," not
what the Calvinists mean by "will " in its wider sense, the whole
subjective activities, including disposition and subjective desires
leading to vohtion ; no ; but simply and nakedly, the power of
choosing, the volition-making power. Either he is ignorr.nt of
the main drift of our meaning, or he discards it. Then he tells
us every act of the intelligence is merely passive. And "erc/'y
state of the sensihility is a 2y(issii:e imjyresslon.f^ Then comes
volition, efficiently produced by nothing, within or without the
mind, always contingent. These are the only antecedents of
free volition of which Dr. Bledsoe knows anything! The Al-
mighty may necessitate states of intelligence — mere passivities —
\>y his agency in providence or regeneration, if he pleases. But
he has not thereby communicated either necessity or even cer-
tainty of a single right volition in the neAv-born creatui'e; for
those states are only antecedent occasions, not efficients of

222 THE PHILOSOPHY OF VOLITION.

volition. God may have new created the heart, bvit the mau
may still make every volition a sin, if he chooses!

One more of Dr. Bledsoe's complaints of unfairness remains to
be noticed. This is, that toe assert his philosojyJiy to he virtualhj
Pelagian. This charge we did undoubtedly make, and intend
to repeat. Now, Pelagius and Celestius taught sundry dogmas,
such as baptismal redemption, monkery, the existence of unre-
deemed infants dying in infancy in a happy eternal state which
yet is not the Christian's heaven, which Dr. Bledsoe does not
hold ; nor does the veriest Socinian on whose modern shoulders
Pelagius's own mantle has fallen, hold them. They are as anti-
quated as the Ptolemaic astronomy. These ancient heretics,
again, carried out their erroneous first principles with a symme-
trical consistency in some results which we never dreamed of
ascribing to Dr. Bledsoe; we do him no such injustice. In
these senses he is, if he will prefer it so, no Pelagian. But in
church history Pelagianism is a given, definite code of doctrines
in philosophy and theology, clustering around certain hinge-
propositions. These hinge-propositions granted, the essential
body of the system follows for all consistent minds. What wo
mean by calling Dr. Bledsoe a virtual Pelagian is, then, this :
that he asserts these hinge-propositions, and the more obvious
and important of their consequences.

The central position of Pelagius and Celestius was this: 1,
That volitions are contingent, and uncontrolled by any efficient
antecedent, either in or out of the mind ; and that if they were
not, man would neither be a free nor justly responsible agent.
Accordingly, 2, They define sin and holiness as consisting only
in sinful or right acts of soul. They hold, 3, That a natural or
original sin or righteousness would be no sin or righteousness,
because not chosen by the sotd in an originating act of choice.
They also hold, 4, That responsibility is absolutely limited by
ability, taking "ability" in its scientific sense. Hence, 5, Prime-
val man did not have any positive moral character impressed
on him at creation. If he had, not being the result of his
own volition, it would have been as absolutely non-moral as
the natural color of his hair. But he was innocent; i. e., in
a state of harmless neutrality at the outset, and had to acquire
his own positive moral character in his after career, by right

THE PHILOSOPHY OF VOLITION. 223

acts of choice. Hence, 6, Ko power, not even the Almighty,
could determine or give certainty to man's free volitions con-
sistently with the nature of his free agency. Hence, also, 7,
There can be no such native immoral disposition as that which
Calyinists call moral deprayity, inherited hj children from Adam,
for, if original, it would not have originated in the child's act of
choice, and so, woidd have been involuntary and non-moral.
Children, therefore, however they may go astray into sin from
evil example, are not actually born depraved. So also, 8, " con-
cupiscence," an appetency for WTong not matured into pur-
pose, although the occasion of sin, is not sin. And last, 9, The
re-creation of a soul into holiness, in regeneration, would be
incompatible with free agency ; hence, the gracious agency in
regeneration is only suasive ; and the change of heart can be,
essentially, no more than the sinner's putting forth a hearty
volition to change his conduct. Such is the well-known out-
line; it is not necessary to burden the page with an array of
names of learned sound, to substantiate the statement. It will
not be disputed by the well-informed. Our testimony is, that
this is virtually Dr. Bledsoe's creed; and that it is not "Wes-
leyan Arminianism. We shall let him speak mainly for him-
sek

Now, as to the first position, hear him (Theodicy, p. 153) :
"TVe lay it do-^Ti, then, as an established and fundamental po-
sition, that the mind acts and puts forth volitions, without being
caused to do so — without being impelled by its own prior action
or by the prior action of anything else. ... It is this exemption
which constitutes the freedom of the human mind." Examina-
tion of Edwards : "I think we should contend for a perfect indiff-
erence, not in regard to feeling, but in regard to the -will." (P. 110.)

As to the second, it is enough to quote from the Itevieio, p. 28,
these words : ^'Holiness consists in those things which 'are done^
hy us according to the will of God, and not in those things which
he has giyen us." Can anything be more explicit?

On the third point Dr. Bledsoe is equally explicit. The whole
loth section of his Examination of Edwards is but a distillation of
this Pelagian heresy. Let this unmistakable sentence suffice, p.
198: "It strikes my mind with the force of self-eyident triith,
that nothing can be our virtue, unless we are, in some sexise, the

224 THE PHILOSOPHY OF VOLITION.

author of it ; aud to affirm that a man may be justly praised or
blamed, that he may be esteemed virtuous or vicious, ou account
of what he has wholly aud exclusively received fi'om another,
ajDpears to me to contradict one of the clearest dictates of reason."

That Dr. Bledsoe holds, with all his heart, the fourth Pelagian
principle, is sufficiently evinced by this sentence from the E,varii~
illation of Edwards, p. 182 : " If my volitions are brought to
pass by the strength and influence of motives, I am not respon-
sible for them."

On the fifth point, our evidence is superabundant. jLCvieic, p.
28 : Dr. Bledsoe professes to quote, and adopts expressly these
words of another : " "Was not primal man holy f . . .1 answer,
innocent, l)ut not Jwlyy Exaininatlon of Edwards, p. 199: "I
deny that Adam was created or brought into existence righteous."
P. 198: "He is neither virtuous nor vicious, neither righteous
nor sinful. This was the condition of Adam, as it very clearly
appears to me, at the instant of his creation."

On the sixth point, may be quoted, along with many passages
from the Theodicy, the following from the Heview, p. 34: "Be-
hind this veil of words," (the phrase, "certainty of volitions,"
used by Calvinists,) " as thin as gossamer, we see the same old
thing, the scheme of necessity, grinning upon us." This latter
he declares impossible to be reconciled with free agency. And
Heview p. 6, borrowing the words of another : " Therefore — with
reverence be it spoken — the Almighty himself cannot do this
thing."

On the seventh point. Dr. Bledsoe professes in some places
to depart from the consistent Pelagian track. He says, p. 21,
that he has always held, in direct opposition to Pelagius, that
Adam's sin " caused the depravity of human nature ;" and that,
while "Adam was created upright, in the image of God," "in-
fants are born with a fallen and depraved nature, and can there-
fore never be saved, without the regenerating grace of the Ho-
ly Spirit." Let us pause here a moment, to illustrate the inten-
sity of his self-contradiction, both in thought and word. In
this point, he is not, according to his present assertion, a Pela-
gian ; but it is absolute absurdity that he, with his positions, is
not a Pelagian here, as in other things. Let the reader note,
first, the flat verbal contradiction. Ou the last page, "Adam

THE PHILOSOPHY OF TOLITION. 225

was not created liolv," only innocent. "I deny tliat Adam was
brought into existence righteous." But now, lo! "Adam was
created upright." Does not "upright" mean "righteous"? or
is there some miserable jugglery in the interchange of these
synonyms ? But, second, Dr. Bledsoe has no business believing
that infants are born with a fallen and depraved nature. For,
according to his own clearest doctrine, on the last page, any
quality which is original, cannot he a moral quahty, not being
the acquirement of the agent's own undetermined electing act.
Any mind that can put two and two together will see that Dr.
Bledsoe is bound to follow his leader here also. Again, he has
" dinned into us " his heresy — thoroughly Pelagian — that if a vo-
lition is caused efficiently hy anything^ in the man or without, it
is not free. Then, it is impossible that a free agent can have a
native principle certainly causative of sinful acts ; because, ac-
cording to Dr. Bledsoe, such acts would not be free. Hence, this
doctrine of a depravity which is the " source " of all man's er-
rors, is, in his mouth, utter contradiction and absurdity. Again,
Dr. Bledsoe cannot hold that sinners have native depravity and
need salvation by grace, as he has said, p. 21, lievieiv, because,
in strict accordance with his philosophy, he has assured us,
again and again, to the contrary. Thus, lievieio, Jan., 1875, p.
97: "New born infants deserve no punishment at all." April,
1874, p. 353 : " TJie omnipotence of God him^self cannot tal'e
uicay our sins and turn iis to himself without our voluntary
■consent and co-op&ration. Does the dying infant give that volun-
tary, 7'ational consent and co-oj)erat'wn f " Of course not ; it is in-
capable of it. Then either it has no original depravity, or, dying
in h fancy, it must, according to Dr. Bledsoe, inevitably he damned
hy it. Let him be honest, then, and either go to the Pelagian
ground, where he properly belongs, or else admit himself a be-
liever in universal infant damnation. Now, let the reader pause
and weigh for himself the inexorable logic of this dilemma. When
lie has done so, he will say it is vain for Dr. Bledsoe, according
to his wont, to wiithe and roar, to scold and vituperate, in the
liope of hiding his agony.

On the eighth point, Dr. Bledsoe so "glories in his shame"
that it is almost superfluous to quote evidence that he does not
think concupiscence is sin. But, as further illustrating his con-

226 THE rniLosoPHY of yolitiox.

sistency, \\e quote Rccieir, January, 1877, p. 24: "Dr. Dabney
says that we appeal to our philosophy 'to deny the sinfulness of
original concupiscence.' We do no such thing. We appeal to
our consciousness, to the consciousness of all men, and not to any
philosophy "u-hatever, to show that a new horn infant is not shi-
falj or deserving of punishment, on account of what it brings
into the world with it." Yet, he had said, p. 21, that it is born
depraved ! He then goes on to assert, in manifold terms, that
concupiscence is not sin. He is even rash enough to qiiote Au-
gustine ^ as holding with him.

On the ninth point of the Pelagian scheme which I have men-
tioned, Dr. Bledsoe, according to that method of absolute self-
contradiction which is the chief trait of his philosophy, is both
on the Pelagian side and the opposite. Consistency would re-
quire him to be aU the time on the Pelagian side. If, as he so
often holds, volition cannot l>e caused by anything, either in the

' That Augustine did not exclude concupiscence from his definition of sin is evi-
dent from many passages of his "writings against the Pelagians; one of which we
shall quote from the very treatise cited by Dr. Bledsoe, Contra duas EpisUdus Pela-
gianorum, Lib. I., Cap. 10: "Magis enim se dicit (Paulus, ILom. vii. 16), legi cou-
sentire quam carnis concupiscentife. Haneemmpeccati 7iomi7ie ap-peWat." In chap-
ter thirteen of the same book there is a passage which will, perhaps, account for the
mistake into which Dr. Eledsoe has fallen. Augustine is explaining in what sense
concupiscence in the baptized may be called sin and yet not sin : " Sed ha?c (concu-
piscentia) ctiamsi vocatur peccatum, non utique quia peccatum est, sed c^uiapeccato
facta est, sic vocatur: sicut scriptura manus cujusque dicitur, quod manus earn fec-
erit. Peccata autem sunt, qu.se secundum carnis concupiscentiam vel iguorantiam
illicite fiunt, dicuntur, cogitantur ; quie transacta etiam nos teueut, si non remittan-
tur. Et ista ipsa carnis concupiscentia, in baptismo sic dimittitur, ut quamvis tracta
Bit a nascentibus, nihil noceat renascentibus "

So also in his De Xup. et Coneup, I. 26 : "In eis, qui regenerantur in Christo,
cum remissiouem accipiunt prorsus omnium peccatorum, utique necesse est, ut
reatits etiam hujus licet adhuc maneutis concupiscentuB remittatur; manet aciu,
praeteriit reatu.'" This is almost identical (allowing for the clearer views of Luther
and Melanchthon on the subject of justification as a forensic act) with the statement
of the Apology for the Augsburg Confession, Art. I. (See Hase's EwjigeliscJi-Pro-
test. Dog77iatik, p. 75.) "Lutherus semper ita scripsit, quod baptismus tollat
reatum peecati originahs, etiamsi materiale peccati maneat, yiAelicii concupiscentia.
AdJidit etiam de materiali quod Spiritus Sauctus, datus per baptismum, incipit
mortificare concupiscentiam. " Melanchthon, more than once in the Apology says
that Augustine is accustomed to define "peccatum originis concupiscieutiam esse."

Dr. Bledsoe, it would seem, has taken a limited statement (and that not under-
stood) in regard to concupiscence in the regenerate, as if it were designed to be
universal.

THE PHILOSOrHY OF YOLITION. 227

mind or out of it ; if all antecedent states, wliotlier of intelligence
or emotion (the only emotions he kno^vs of being passive impres-
sions or sensibilities), however they mar be determined by om-
nipotence itself, still bear to volitions no otiier relations than
that of conditions and not efficients ; then Pelagius' view is the
only possible one. There can be no other regeneration than a
moral suasion resulting in a contingent and mutable change of
choices as to sin and righteousness. And when Dr. Bledsoe is
fighting a Calvinist, he is virtually in this position. He denies
that there is or can be a necessitated holiness ; and by this denial
he makes us clearly see he means to deny the possibility of God's
propagating in a free agent any such subjective state as would
be followed with efficient certainty by any given kind of volitions.
He also travesties the Bible doctrine of regeneration — showing
again that he does not understand it — as God's directly and ne-
cesssivily producing the volitions of the new born man. "Whereas
the Bible doctrine is, that God efficiently produces tlie holy dis-
2)osition which regulates the man's volitions. When he w^ould
fain cleanse himself from the slough of Pelagianism, he paints to
himself a regeneration which consists in God's efficiently creat-
ing in the man new views of truth in the intelligence and new acts
of sensibility. But on this monstrosity we have sundry remarks
to make. One is, that Dr. Bledsoe declares all the time, these
new views and feelings God has produced are but mere pas-
sive functions of soul ; and again, that volitions are, after all,
uncaused by them. Then, of course, such impressions, however
far omnipotence might carry them, would constitute no moral
change of tl\e soul. And we have, after all, no certainty of any
new conduct from the new born man. If each volition arises
uncaused, contingent, connected by no tie of efficiency with any
antecedent state or act of mind, then all the volitions possibly
may ; so that we might have this monster : a man thoroughly re-
generated by Omnipotence, and yet happening to choose to do'
nothing but sin ! Our second remark is, that this scheme of re-
generation, if it amounted to anything, would make the converted
man a mere machine. It is entirely too necessitarian for us Cal-
vinists! The states which, are the necessary antecedent condi-
tions— not causes, according to Dr. Bledsoe — of all his regene-
rate volitions, are mere functions of passivity. So far as those-

228 THE PHILOSOPHY OP YOLITION.

volitions liave any connection or character at all, it is with
impressions, in which the soul is tnerdy jJC ■'<■•<'"'<' •' Thus, true
spontaneit"«^ is left out ; it is entirely too mechanical for its Cal-
vinists.

But Dr. Bledsoe appeals to his friend AYiggers {Augustinian-
isiii aud Pelagianism), who is himself Pelagian in tendency, and
who helped him so much in writing his Theodicy, to sIioav what
Pelagianism really is. Well, Wiggers' showing is pretty just, so
far as it goes, but it is incomplete and superficial. It must be
borne in mind that this system of error, like every other system
of error or truth of human origin, was not fully developed by
its inventors. Pelagius and Celestius did not establish all the
regular parts and corollaries of their heresy, any more than
Copernicus developed all the laws of that planetary system
called Copernican. But from the premises which Pelagius gave
the rest grew, in the ulterior discussion, by a logical necessity ;
and thus the system known as Pelagianism came into the history
of theologv. Every one who thinks connectedly, whether he be
friend or enemy of that system, recognizes the vital members of
the system as belonging to it. Dr. Bledsoe quotes "\Mggers^ as
saving that the results of Pelagianism condemned by the General
Council of Ephesus, A. D. 431 — (wasn't that the " Robber Coun-
cil " ?) — were seven. !Now, first, we have not been speaking of
the results, but of the principles of the system ; and second,
these were very far from being all the results of Pelagianism de-
bated in the church. But some of these propositions Dr. Bled-
soe says he holds ; some he both holds and rejects, as we have
seen ; and all of them he would hold, if he had the logic and
consistency of the early Pelagians. Thus, he assures us he
does not think Adam's body would have died, whether he had
sinned or not. He would be much more consistent if ho did
think so ; for he thinks that millions of infants die avIio have no
sin, original or actual. Why not Adam too ?

Nor can w-e see why Dr. Bledsoe should repudiate the sixth
and seventh results of Pelagius : that the law, as well as the gos-
pel, may be a means of salvation; and that men wdthout the
gospel may in some cases practice true godhness, and go to
heaven. For upon his theory of free will, why should not these
volitions, which are always loose from all efficient control, hap-

THE PHILOSOPHY OF VOLITION. 229

pen sometimes to be riglit ? And none but a Calvinist can con-
sistently liold it certain that no Jew nor Pagan can serve God be-
cause be knows no gospel ; for tbis would make him responsible
for volitions wbicli arise witb certainty. The only reason then^
that Dr. Bledsoe disclaims these " results " is that he does not
think consistently.

In dismissing this part of the discussion, we beg the reader
especially to note Dr. Bledsoe's positive claim that he holds the
'\\'esleyan theology. This we shall now effectually explode. On
pp. 24-25, of his Jievieio he concludes, sustained by the suf-
frages of a wondrous theologian, in the form of a Presbyterian
young lady, that he knows intuitively no one is responsible for
his native depravity ; and he tells us in the same connection,
that it is also an intuitive datum of his, that concupiscence is
not sinful. " This," he exclaims, with ardor, " is our Methodism

born with John Wesley in the 3-ear of our Lord 1788."

Kow, Dr. Bledsoe is very right in his chronology, so far as that
his doctrine was " born " long since the days of inspiration.
But we utterly dispute that it is Methodism, or was born with
John Wesley. Xo. This is his Pelagianism, " born " in the
fifth century. Hear David, in the 51st Psalm, Tepenthig because
he was shapen in iniquity and conceived in sin. Hear Christ
say, John iii. 6 : " That which is born of the flesh is flesh."
Hear Paul, Eph. ii. 8 : " We were by nature children of wrath."
Is God angry with what is not sinful ? Who knows best what
is guilty, God, or that wonderful " Presbj'terian young lady ? "
And when we hear Wesley, "we find that he has as little to do
with the paternity of Dr. Bledsoe's doctrine as the Bible has.
Doctrinal Tracts^ P^^g© 251 : *' It has already been proved that
this original stain cleaves to every child of man, and that Tiereby
they are children of wrath and liable to eternal damnation."
Says Dr. Bledsoe, BevieiL\ p. 21 : "xA. neio horn infant is not s'ui'
fid, or deserving of 2^'^>dislinunt''' Says Wesley, it is, by reason
of its original depravity, " a child of wrath, and Halle to eternal
damnation.'" Wesley, on Original Sin, first British edition, pp.
155, 156 : " Now, this bias of the will is certainhj evil arul sinfuly
and hateful to God ; whether we have contracted it ourselves, or
whether we derive it from Adam, makes no difference." ....
" Therefore the inference, 'if natural, and, in some sense, neces-

230 THE PHILOSOPHY OF TOLITIOX.

sarv, then no sin,' does l>y no oneans hold.'''' Dr. Bledsoe asserts
that if it be natural, and in any sense necessary, it is no sin.
"Wesley adds : " This doctrine has been held, ... so far as we
can learn, in every church under heaven, at least from the time
that God spake by Moses." Alas for Dr. Bledsoe, Wesley dis-
cards him; says to him : " I never knew you." Let him novr
launch some of his scornful invective at the great founder of
Methodism. "W'e wait to hear the thunder. Many proofs,
equally explicit, might be collected from Wesley On Original

Sin.

On page 27 of his JiCcieiL', as in the fifteenth section of his
Examination of EJira/'ds, Dr. Bledsoe asserts in its baldest
form that most characteristic Pelagian principle, that Adam was
not made holy, but only innocent, which he explains as meaning,
neither positively righteous nor sinful ; that no moral agent can
have such positive initial righteousness ; because such a state, if
possessed, not being freely chosen by an act of will, would be no
moral state at all. He proceeds, page 27 : " Probation is the
necessary antecedent to the only means of attaining moral free-
dom or holiness." On tins heresy we remark, first : Scripture
says, Luke i. 35 : " The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee ; . . .
therefore, also, that holy thing lohich sitall he lorn of thee, shall
be called the Son of God." Here was a thing holy hefore a 2rro-
lation, horn holy. It was not the eternal Word, for that was not
born of Mary ; it was the humanity of the Messiah. This sim-
ple but terrible antithesis should be enough to open our author's
eyes to the depth of his Pelagianism ! In fact, his o^-n propo-
sition, as stated by himself, does articulately dispute the possi-
bility of our Redeemer's being by nature a holy free agent.
But this is the common faith of all churches, and the corner-
stone of our salvation. We now prove that Dr. Bledsoe's
Wesleyan authorities are as dead against him as is the Bible,
and the church of all ages. Thus :

When Dr. Taylor, of Xor^^-ich, a recognized modern Pelagian,
said, exactly according to Dr. Bledsoe's philosophy: ''Nature
cannot be morally eoj-rupted, but by the choice of a moral agent "

Wesley's reply is in these emphatic words: "You may play

upon words as long as you please, but still I hold this fast : I,
and vou too, whether you vdU own it or no, am inclined, a,nd „as

THE PHILOSOPHY OF TOLITION. 231

ever since I can remember, antecedently to any cJioice of my own,
to pride, revenge, idolatry." Isn't Dr. Bledsoe also evidently in-
clined to the first two? "If voii will not call these moral cor^
Tvj)t}ons, call them just what yon will. But the fact I am as W'ell
assured of as that I have memory or understanding." {^Original
Sin, pp. 193, 194.)

Dr. Taylor, in accordance with Dr. Bledsoe's philosophy, had
said : " It is absolutely necessary, before any creature can be a
subject of this" (God's peculiar kingdom), " that it learn to em-
ploy and exercise its powers suitably to the nature of them."
Says Wesley: ^' It is not necessary.''^ .... " But it must appear
extremely absurd to those wlio believe God can create spirits,
both wise and holy ; that he can stamp any creature with what
measure of holiness he sees good, at the first moment of its ex-
istence." . . . "Just in the same manner you" (Taylor) "go on:
* Our first parents in Paradise were to form their minds to an
habitual subjection to the law of God, without w hich they could
not be received into his spiritual kingdom.' This runs upon the
same mistaken supposition, that God could not create tJieni holy.
Certainly Jia could, and d'uir (Pp. 221, 223.) Says Taylor, the
Pelagian, like Dr. Bledsoe : " Blyldeousness is rigli t action^ Says
"^Vesley : " Indeed, it is not. Here, as we said before, is a funda-
mental mistake. It is a rigid state of mind, which differs from
right action as the cause does feom the effect. Eighteousness
io properly and directly a right temper or disj)osition of mind, or
a complex of all right tempers." Wesley here, at one trenchant
blow, demoUshes Dr. Bledsoe's whole philosophy of the will, and
teaches with the Bible and all orthodox Christians of all churches,
that right volitions are not uncaused; but the ^^ effects'' ^^ caused''''
by holy dispositions acting a priori to the volitions. (P. 286.)
And says Wesley in conclusion, p. 291: "From all this it may
appear, that the doctrine of origincd rigliteousness, as w^ell as that
of original si/i, hath a firm foundation in Scripture, as weU as in
the attributes of a wise, holy and gracious God."

This express contradiction of Wesley himself leaves j)oor Dr.
Bledsoe's " Methodism " in a pitiable plight. We have one more
Methodist authority, which is, if possible, still more damaging^
that of Mr. Eichard Watson's T/ieolog. Institute.^, Pt. IL, Ch.
18, Fall of Man, Doctrine of Original /Sin. Having stated pre-

232 THE THILOSOPHY OF VOLITION.

cisely the doctrine of Dr. Bledsoe and the Pelagians, lie proceeds
to refute it thus : " If, however, it has been established that God
made man ' upright ; ' that he was created in ' knowledge, right-
eousness, and true holiness,' and that at his creation he was pro-
nounced ' verij good; ' all this" \yiz. Dr. Bledsoe's theory of voli-
tion] " falls to the ground, and is the vain reasoning of man against
the explicit testimony of God. The fallacy is, however, easily
detected. It lies in confounding * luilj'ds of holiness ' with the
principle of holiness. Now, though habit is the result of acts,
and acts of voluntary choice, yet, if the choice be a right one —
and right it must be in order to be an act of holiness — and if
this right choice, frequently exerted, produces so many acts as
shall form what is called a habit, then either the principle from
which that right choice arises must be good or bad, or neither.
If neither, a right choice has no cause at all ; if bad, a right choice
could not originate from it ; if good, then there may be a holy
principle in man, a right nature before choice ; and so, that part
of the argument falls to the ground. Wow, in Adam, that recti-
tude of princ'tjjle fro7n loJdcli a rigid choice and right acts Jlowed,
was either created with him, or formed hy his own volitions. If
the latter he affirmed, then he must have willed right hefore he had
a princijple of rectiUide, which is absurd; if the former, then his
creation in a state of vwrcd rectitude toith an aptitude and dis-
position to good, is established''' The author then sustains the
truth by citing similar arguments from "Wesley and President
Edwards.

Now this book is one of the text books of the Wesleyan min-
istry. The words we have quoted from it, which are worthy of
being written in gold, give, with unanswerable precision, the very
argument we advanced in our Beview of October last, pp. 651,
656. The reader is referred to the discussion there, in which we
established by the same logic and by unanswerable Scriptures,
this doctrine of the Christian churches. Dr. Bledsoe, in his reply,
took good care not to venture near that part of our argument. Let
it be also noted how scornfully and utterly Wesley and "Watson
here cast away his pet theory of the will. The latter states the
idea, "a right choice has no cause at all," Dr. Bledsoe's very
theory, as a self-evident absurdity, which he uses to reduce his
opponent to a ruinous dilemma. Botli of them teach expressly

THE PHILOSOPHY OF YOLITION. 233

and by constant implication, that holy dispositions are the effi-
cient cause of right Tolitions. We have seen Wesley declare that
Dr. Taylor's theory about volition, which is Dr. Bledsoe's, is his
^\fundamental nnistake.''' Is Dr. Bledsoe a Wesleyan? or, like
Taylor, a Pelagian ?

The sophism which underlies this fundamental mistake is
so mischievous, and has evidently so completely deceived Dr.
Bledsoe, that although we explained it briefly in our October No.,
p. 652 (top), it is worthy of further illustration. The old sophism
is, that a man cannot be responsible for a disposition with which
he is endued by nature ; because we intuitively judge that tee can^
not 1)6 responsihle for vjliat is hivoluntary. The answer is, that in
the sense of that intuition, a maviS own native disposition is vol-
vntary with hhn. Nobody constrains him to feel it, or yield to it ;
he feels it of himself ; he yields to it of himself. The meaning of
the proposition, " a man is not responsible for what is involun-
tary," as our common sense assents to it, is this : A man is not
respons'Me for lohat hefalls him against his own sincere volition ;
that is all. Now, will Dr. Bledsoe be rash enough to say that a
man's natural disposition actuates him against his own sincere
volition ? that the naturally envious man, for instance, is actu-
ated by his own envious disposition, against his own hearty
volition? Hardly. Nature does not act against itself. Dr.
Bledsoe seems very strangely to jump to the conclusion, that,
because we do not elect beforehand our natural dispositions,
therefore we do not have them voluntarily, and oiTght not to be
held responsible about them at all. He cannot see the simple
truth, that this native disposition being the mnans own, its influ-
ence is as really a function of his spontaneity as any volition
could be, even on Dr. Bledsoe's extreme theory. Now, one
simple question will clear away his confusion. May not a
man's free preference accept and adopt that which nature gave
him, just as much as though he had first elected the quality and
procured it for himself ? For example, here is a young gentle-
man who has a very nice brown beard. How does he like it
himself ? Extremely well ; indeed he altogether prefers and ad-
mires it, and quite prides himself on it. But whence did he get
it? Shall we insinuate that it is the work of his own volition?
(by the aid of a hair-dye ?) Oh ! no. Natui'e gave it to him ;

23-1 THE PHILOSOPHY OF VOLITION.

dan that is one essential ground wliy lie is proud of it! So we
see how entirely possible it is that a quality which one did not
acquire hy an act of choice may yet be most entirely his free^
sponta?ieous preference. Once more. "We beg our young gen-
tleman's pardon for supposing — merely for argument's sake —
that he has the most frightfid "carroty red" beard, and — what
is not at all impossible — that he is very foohshly and heartily
proud of that same beard. Do not aU the young ladies judge
him to be therein guilty of " shockingly bad taste ? " Of course.
Dr. Bledsoe would come to his defence with his Pelagian logic
and would argue that, inasmuch as his yoimg gentleman had
not voluntarily dyed his beard carroty red — but naughty Dame
Nature had done it for him — therefore his perverse Hking for it
must be involuntary ; and so it is no violation of any principle
of taste. But none of the young ladies would beheve him ; their
common sense would show them that this perverse pride in the
carroty red was just as spontaneous and free as though the fop
had dyed the fair brown beard red "on purpose." Let the
reader apply this parable to man's native moral disposition, and
he will see that, although they be native, yet are we as free and
responsible in them as though we had first procured them by a
volition.

Once more. Dr. Bledsoe is much aggrieved by our saving
that the result of his Theodicy is, that God admitted sin into
his universe hecause he could not Jielj) it. On page 23 of his
lieviev:, he exclaims that to hold such an opinion of God would
be virtual atheism. And he urges, page 24, that the very gist
of his theory is, that no one ought to discuss the question "why
God permitted sin,'" because, in fact, he does not permit it at all.
That this last is a play upon words only, and that he does teach
substantially that God cannot help men's sinning if they choose.
Dr. Bledsoe shall himself prove. He beheves that sin is here,
and that it is not God's choice that it should be here. (See
Theodicy, pp. 197 and 199.) He sees that sin ^'vydl raise its
hideous head ; but he does not say, ' So let it be.' No ; sin is
the thing which God hates, and which he is determined , by all
means within the reach of his omnipotence, utterly to root out
and destroy." It is here. God does not consent to it, but is
determined, as far as he can, " xdterly to root it out." Yet it

THE PHILOSOPHY OF VOLITION. 235

will always be (/. e., iu hell). Now, we ask any plain mind,
has not Dr. Bledsoe, iu saying these threo things, substantial!}^
said, that siu enters, because God cannot help it? Again, ho
says, "with much iteration, *' Haying created a world of moral
agents ... it was impossible for him to prevent sin," etc., etc.
" He could not prevent such a thing." How much difference is
there between this, and our " could not help it ? " The candid
reader will see none. And as to the question, whether it is
correct to say God has " permitted sin," this, even after Dr.
Bledsoe has robbed him of his omnipotence, is a mere verbal
quibble. "WTien he says we must not speak of God as "j)er-
mitting" siu, he is merely asserting that the word is always the
synonym of consent to from j^reference. Of course God does not
consent to sin, out of preference for sin itself ; and if that is the
only meaning of "permit," then God does not "permit sin."
But wise men "permit" many things which they do not prefer.
This use of the word is undisputed. And since we do not, like
Dr. Bledsoe, rob God of his omnipotence over rational free
agents, when we see him, for instance, permitting an archangel
■ — Satan — to sin, and we know that his omnipotence would have
enabled him to sustain Satan in holiness, even as it sustains
Gabriel, then we are certain that we are right in saying God
permits sin, while he does not for its own sake prefer it.

Had Dr. Bledsoe considered a little, he would not have robbed
God of his almightiness in the interest of a false speculation.
He would have seen these consequences. If God, " ha^-ing cre-
ated a world of moral agents, .... could not prevent such a
thing," then, first, there is no certain encouragement for sinners
to pray to God for grace ; and, second, there is no cei-tainty that
God can keep sin out of heaven. Are not angels and saints in
heaven free moral agents ? If God was " determined, by all the
means within the reach of his omnipotence," to root sin out of
this world, and has failed^ may he not also fail to keep it out of
the heavenly world ? Dr. Bledsoe cannot evade this by any of
his expedients. Thus, his w^ork, instead of being "a Theodicy,'^
spreads the pall of despair over the kingdoms both of grace and
glory.

We now approach the second part of our uudeitaking — the
more articulate discussion of Dr. Bledsoe's special theory of

236 THE PHILOSOPHY OF VOLITION.

free agency. He charges us witli a deliuqueucy in not dis-
cussing it formally in our niimber of October last, where we^
did not propose, nor undertake, to do it. We shall now repair
that omission, but in a manner which, we surmise, will contri-
bute very little to his contentment. Other inducements to this
discussion exist in the fundamental importance of the doctrine
of free agenc}-, and in the relation between Dr. Bledsoe's theory
of it and all his other theological lucubrations. He seems to-
suppose that we evaded the task of arguing for our view, imder
the pretext of such discussions being supei-fluous for Presb}i;e-
rian readers, when in fact we knew that his mighty logic in th&
.Examination of Edwards had already demolished all the Cal-
viuistic arguments ! The reader shall see. The method we pro-
pose is, to define carefully our theory of free agency, and then to
prove it. We shall then be prepared to entertain Dr. Bledsoe's
rival theory, and weigh its contents — if there be any.

First, then, the question between us is not whether man is a
real free agent, or whether consciousness testifies that we are,
or whether such real free agency is essential to jiist responsi-
bihty. We believe the affirmative of all these as fully as Dr,
Bledsoe ; and when he represents the debate as between those
who hold to a real and conscious free agency and those who
dispute it, he misrepresents us. The question is, not whether a
real free agency is, but only what it is.

Second, The word " will " has been often used in a broad,
and also in a narrow sense. In the broad sense, it is what the
Scrij)tnre popularly calls " the heart," or what Sir W. Hamilton
calls the " conative," or Dr. McCosh the " optative " powers.
This is the sense in which Calvinistic writers use the word
" will," when they distribute the powers of man's soul into the
powers of sensibility (passive), powers of intellection (simply
cognitive), and " will," or active powers. In this broad sense,
the " will *' includes much besides the specific power of volition ;
viz., all those appetitive or "orectic" powers which furnish the
emotive element in subjective motives. In the narrow sense,
the word " will " means the specific power of choice, or the "vo-
litional " power. This is the sense in which Dr. Bledsoe uses
it ; and this is the sense in Avhich we shall use it.

Third, The " motive " of volition is a term which is contin-

THE PHILOSOPHY OF VOLITION. 237

Tiallj used by Dr. Bledsoe, aud even by Edwards, with a mis-
chievous ambiguity. It is often employed for the object, that
to which the soul moves in volition. Aud nearly all the confu-
sion in the arguments on the will has arisen from the mistaken
notion, that we regard this object, along with its involuntary im-
pression on the sensibility, as the efficient of a volition. Again
do we forewarn Dr. Bledsoe and our readers, that these, in our
view, are not motive, but only the outward occasion for the ac-
tion of real motive. What then, according to us, is the efficient
motive ? The soul's o^vIl spontaneous, subjective desire, as
guided by its own intelHgence ; and this desire is a function of
a faculty distinct from, yea, an opposite to, the sensibility ; of
an active power, whereas the sensibihty is a "passive power";
of a power wherein the soul is self-moved, instead of being
moved from "wdthout ; wherein the soul is agent, and not mere
subject of an effect.

Fourth, If we should say that volitions are " morally neces-
sary," Ave should mean, with Edwards, only that they arise with
fM certainty, and by the efficiency of their subjective motives.
We think, with Dr. Hodge, that the misunderstanding of the
word " necessity' " does boundless mischief in this debate ; but
we do not think that this is the fault of the word. The truth is,
that since this Latin word was domesticated in philosophy, it
has undergone a change iu its popular use ; and even scholars
have lost sight of the fact, that its philosophical sense, of full
certainty of eventuation, and nothing more, is its proper etymo-
logic meaning. What is its real origin? The '^ necessitas" is
simply '^ quod noii cedet,'' the itnf ailing. We can recall the
reader's mind from its hallucination, by reminding him of the
twdn-brother of this word, which has not been abused by modern
popular use, " incessant^ Every school boy knows that *' in " is
*' un," the negative particle. So that " incessant " is tlie unceaS'
ing ; and so "necessary" (necessant) is the non-ceasing. But
our familiar word " incessant " has not undergone the bad luck
of being perverted to mean — wholly another thing — the c;nnpul~
sonj. Nobody is so perverse as to think the " incessant talker '*
is a compulsory talker — a man who is compelled to talk. Well,
let the reader only give the great Latin scholastics credit for
understanding the real meaning of the Avord, and this mighty

238 THE PHILOSOPHY OF VOLITION.

bugbear of " necessity " will vanisli. He -will tlien see that it is
no dishonest after-thought, no " dodge " to escape the just odiunv
of a hateful theory, to say that by a "necessary vohtion " w©
mean — -and philosophy always did mean — simply Avhat the
phrase " an incessant volition" would classically mean, volitlo qiice^
onediante inotivo, non cedet ; simply this, that, supposing the sub-
jective motive present, the volition will not fail to rise. Now,
"where is the murder?" Why should oiir innocent Latin word
be held responsible for the wholly different idea which popular
use has forced upon it, that of inevitable compulsion ? But Dr.
Bledsoe declares roundly (as in Bevleio. p. 34) that he will not
be appeased by this definition ; that nothing shall satisfy him
except our believing that volitions are uncaused and contingent ;
and that they onay fall to rise, though every condition of their
rise be present. Else he thinks the mind is not free.

But, fifth, what is free agency ? Let the reader note that we
do not say " free will." Dr. Bledsoe himself is constrained, in
a sort of grudging way, to grant the reasonableness of Locke's
remark, that freedom is an attribute of an agent and not of a
faculty ; so that, properly speaking, it is the mind which is free,
and not the will. So w^e will not speak of " free will " — at best
an ambiguous term — but of free agency. Dr. Bledsoe is much,
dissatisfied with Edwards for defining freedom as a man's privi-
lege of doing what he chooses. We will venture the assertion
that Dr. Bledsoe will not find any man of common sense who
desires any fuller freedom than this. But the ground of objec-
tion against this clear and practical definition is, that the way in
which choice comes to pass ought to be determined also ; that
if a man has the privilege of doing what he chooses, yet he may
have been made to clioose, in some way infringing his freedom.
And Dr. Bledsoe cites Edwards with great condemnation as say-
ing that, no matter how a man comes to choose thus and thus, if
he has unobstructed privilege of acting as he has chosen, he has
all the freedom he can ask for. Now we presume that the dif-
ference between Dr. Bledsoe and Edwards here is simply this :
that the latter was too clear a thinker to have his mind haunted
with any phantom of a cltoice which is compelled. His common
sense taught him that choice, on any theory whatever, must still
be an uncompelled determination of the soul ; so that his practical

THE PHILOSOPHY OF TOLITIOX. 239

clefinition of freedom does include a freedom of the soul, and not
of the limbs only, as Dr. Bledsoe cavils. Edwards had in his
view, doubtless, that declaration of the "Westminster Confession,
Chapter IX., which frankly says, that freedom is an attribute of
the rational agent so inahenable and essential that it cannot be,
and is not, infringed, whatever the moral state of the soul. So,
if Dr. Bledsoe could only think that " any good can come out of
Nazareth," he might see that when we define free agency as a
man's liberty of doing as he chooses, we are not laying a wicked
trap for him, to catch him in this fraud, viz., that while he has the
privilege of doing as he cliooses^ we will couijjel him to choose as
he chooses. No ; we cannot conceive of that bugbear of his, a
compelled choice ; we assure him we think it, just as he does, the
intensest of contradictions. And so, in our generous desire to
calm his apprehensions — not because it is really necessary — we
tender him this definition of free agency : it is the soul's poAver
of deciding itself to action, according to its own subjective na-
ture. But even this is not going to satisfy him !

But let it be distinctly understood that, by " ability of wdll,'*
we understand a very different thing, namely, fallen man's sup-
posed power to reverse that naturfj by his volition. That power
we utterly deny to a born sinner ; wo do not believe that he can,
or will, choose dispositions exactly against those which it is his
nature to prefer, and thus revolutionize that very nature by a
volition. Ability we deny ; free agency we grant to him.

Sixth, We do not regard President Edwards as infallible, and
did not before Dr. Bledsoe assailed him. The essential structure
of his argument is indestructible, but it has some excrescences
.and blemishes. He, like nearly all the English Christian phil-
osophers of his day, was too much under the influence of the
pious Locke ; and hence his usually clear vision is sometimes
confused by the shallow plausibilities of the sensationalist
psychology. Hence he sometimes seems to confound objective
inducement with subjective motive. He also confuses his rea-
soning bv sometimes using the word "will" in the broad and
sometimes in the narrow sense.

Seventh, The question, " how volitions arise in a free agent,"
has received three distinct answers. One is that of the consistent
sensationalist, fatalist, and pantheist. According to these, voli-

2-10 THE PHILOSOPHY OF VOLITION.

tion is efficiently caused bj emotion ; but emotion is only the
necessary reflex of impression made on the sensibility from
■uithout. '^^'e think, with Dr. Bledsoe, that this scheme is vir-
tually no scheme of free agency at all. Fnder it the soul is,
after all, determined to action by an efficient external to itself ;
the soul is really not agent, but acted on.

The second answer is in the opposite extreme : it stakes our
true free agency in this, that the volition may always be a men-
tal modification arising immediately in the mind without any
efficient at all — a self-determined change. The advocates of this
scheme hold that the free volition must be disconnected even
from subjective motive, and arise, in that sense, absolutely un-
caused. Its advocates describe it sometimes as the theory of the
self-determination of the will as opposed to the self-determina-
tion of the soul, using the "will" in its narrow sense. Some-
times, they say, the mind must be in absolute equilibrium, as to
even subjective motive, when the free volition takes place.
Sometimes, they say, volition is an uncaused event. But always
they concur in holding that the free volition must be a contingent
event, whatever may be the antecedent states of mental convic-
tion and desire looking towards the object of choice.

The third answer shuns both these extremes, and defines free
agency as the self-determination of the soul, not of the specific
faculty of choice. But it holds that rational spirit, like every
other power in nature, conforms to the maxim, "Order is hea-
ven's first law." In other words, it acts, like everything else in
divine providence, in accordance with a regulative law ; and this
law of free volitions is the soul's own rational and appetitive
nature — its Jidbltus. Hence the rational free volition is not an .
" uncaused phenomenon " in the world of mind ; it only arises
by reason of its regular efficient, which is the subjective motive.
By subjective motive is meant that complex of mental judgment
as to the preferable, and subjective appetency for the object
which arise together in the mind, on presentation of the object,
according to the regulative law of the mind's own native disposi-
tion. In a word, the free volition will rise according to, and be-
cause of, the soul's own strongest motive ; and that is the reason
why it is a rational, a free, and a responsible volition. Hence,
•we believe that such volitions are attended with full certainty.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF TOLITIOX. 241

— which is what we mean by moral necessity — and. also with full
freedom. We are fully aware that every man performs acts
whose causation in the soul is more secondary. Thus, the snuiT-
taker opens his box and "takes his pinch," often, perhaps, with-
out any remembered consciousness of the subjective motive. It
is because both mind and limbs have come, by repetition, so un-
der the influence of the law of habit — consiietudo, not Tiahitus.
This law is so influential in this case that we popularly term the
acts " mechanical." Are such acts still rational, free, and re-
sponsible ? They are, so far as previous acts of conscious fi-ec-
<lom formed the consuetudo which now influences the mind and
body.

Now the third is the theory of the will, or of the way respon-
sible volitions rise, held by Calvinists. Does not its right state-
ment evince of itself its correctness to every candid mind ?

1. Our first argument for it then shall be, that it is supported
by man's consciousness. Dr. Bledsoe thinks not. He is, in-
deed, too adroit to say that we are conscious of having rational
responsible volition iciihout motlces; for he foresees the reply,
that consciousness can only be of what is in the mind. He ad-
mits {Examination of Edwards, p. 230) : "We are not conscious
that there is no producing cause of volition. Xo man can be
conscious of that which does not exist." His position (p. 227)
is that "we find our minds in a state of acting. This is all we
discover by the light of consciousness." But is this all? We
raise the question of fact. We assert that whenever the soul
-chooses with sufficient dehberation, we are conscious of choosinn-
according to a subjective motive. Dr. Bledsoe is misled in the
reading of consciousness by haste, pride of hypothesis, and
the evanescent nature of the impression left on remembered
consciousness by the motive when the mind huri'ies on to the
•execution and fruition of its choice. This cause of an errone-
ous reading of consciousness may be well explained by the man-
ner in which we instantaneously drop out of remembered con-
sciousness the ohjects, also, of rapid volitions. The intelligil jle
perception of the object is, as Dr. Bledsoe admits, the absolutely
■essential condition — not cause — of the act of will. Tet often its
presence is not consciously remembered for a moment. Here
is a man fencing. We see him intentionally bring up his sword

242 THE PHILOSOPHY OP TOLITIOX.

and make " tlie guard in tierce.' He saw his aclrersary make,
perhaps with almost Hghtning speed, the "thrust in tierce."
That occasioned his making the guard in the same figure, the
subjective motive being, of course, the desire, according to his
nature, to preserve his own body. Does he remember, an in-
stant after, in which figure his adversary made his thrust ? Per-
haps not. But Dr. Bledsoe admits that his perception, at the
time of the "thrust in tierce," was the occasion without which
he would not have made the "guard in tierce," which he did in-
tentionally make. "\Miat is the solution ? That in the speed of
the mental processes the conscious perception of the thrust
dropped instantaneously out of remembered consciousness.
There is no other. Kow, Dr. Bledsoe will ask that fencer: Do
you remember being rationally conscious of the desire of self-
presei'vation as your subjective motive for making that rapid
guard? And very possibly the fencer will answer: Xo. The
solution which Dr. Bledsoe has just used applies again. Haste
and excitement caused the motive, as the occasion, to drop out
of remembered consciousness. But the intelHgent volition to
"guard in tierce" cotdd no more have arisen in that fencer's,
mind without motive than without object. Let us, then, elimi-
nate the cause of confusion, and inspect any volition which is
sufficiently deliberate ; we know, we are conscious, that motive
prompts it. Had the motive not been, the volition would not
have been. This is but saying that a reasonable man knows
that when he acts deliberately he thinks he has his own "reason
for acting." "When he sees one act, and asking, "Why did you
do that?" .receives the answer, "Oh, for nothing at all," he sets
down the answer as silly. It is the very characteristic of a fool
to act " -u-ithout knowing what for." Is this the description Dr.
Bledsoe means to give of himself when he declares (p. 227) that
he " sees not the effectual power of any cause operating to pro-
duce his vohtions?" Did he write all these wise books and re-
views without "effectually" or decisively "knowing what for?"
Coui'tesy requires us to leave him to make the answer. For our-
selves, we can only say, that when we get to that pass — that we
dehberately choose a line of action Avithout even thinking wo
have in ourselves a rational motive — an aizio. — determinative of
our choice — we hope our friends will select a lunatic asylum for us»

THE PHILOSOPHY OP VOLITION. 243

2. If tlie most deliberate acts of clioice may be thus loose
from tlie efficiency of all antecedents in the mind, then we could
not make a recognition of any permanent cliaracter in ourselves,
or our fellow-men. What do we mean by a character? Clearly
a something having continuity and permanency qualifying the
fi-ee spirit. Any man with common sense will add, " a character
is a cei-tain set of practical principles permanently qualifying the
man." But we need not claim more than the general answer.
Kow one man does not have the gift of "discerning another
man's spirit" by immediate intuition ; he learus character <^J9C>5-
terlori by observing his fellow-mau's volitions. But if Dr. Bled-
soe's theory were true, volitions would be no itidices of character,
for they must be loose from the efficiency of " all antecedents
in or out of the mind ;" and, of course, loose from the regidative
power of that permanent something in the mind constituting its
character. But we ask, emphatically, may not character be at
least sometimes known by conduct ? If not, how does a jury
ever find out whom to punish ? How does Dr. Bledsoe find out
whom to esteem ?

Dr. Bledsoe (in Section XY., Examination of Ed/wards) makes-
a set effoi-t to escape this fatal logic. The place abounds with
the baldest assertions of the fundamental Pelagian postulate,
that a concreated righteousness of principle would be no right-
eousness, because not the result of an act of choice ; and tliat^
hence, no moral agent can be made righteous, but he must do a.
righteousness. President Edwards had argued — Treatise on-
Original Sin — in exact conformity with the Wesleyan Watson,
and with Wesley himself, " Not that principles derive their good-
ness from actions, l)ut that actions derive their goodness from,
the principles whence they proceed ; so that the act of choosing
what is good is no further virtuous than that it proceeds from a.
good principle, or virtuous disposition, of the mind."

Dr. Bledsoe conceives that the fallacy of this argument pro-
ceeds from the ambiguity of the term principle. Taking, e. g.,
the instance of Adam's first eating the forbidden fruit, he claims-
that the " principle " from which this evil volition resulted, was
not any " implanted principle " at all, but Adam's " intention, or
design, or motive." The only " implanted principle " Dr. Bledsoe
sees in the case is, that native desire for material good and for

244 THE PH ILOSOPHY OF TOLITION.

knowledge wliicli Adam's Creator had jilaced in tlie animal and
spiritual parts of tlie creatui'e's person. If God put them there,
lie urges, thej could not haye been sinful ; they must have been
innocent. Sajs he, " And hence, Ave very clearly perceive that
a sinful action may result from those principles of our constitu-
tion which are in themselves neither virtuous nor vicious." And
again, " In fact, the virtuous principle from which the virtuous
act is supposed to derive its character, is not 8.n implanted prin-
ciple at all, but the design, or intention, or motive, with which
the act is done, and of which the created agent is himself the
author."

Now, on this evasion we remark, first, he misrepresents us in
saying we teach there must have been an " implanted principle "
of evil from which Adam's first sin must proceed. Xo. We say
there must have been a principle of evil prioi- in the order of
causation to the act, or else the act would not have been qualified
as evil. And this Dr. Bledsoe is compelled to own, p. 201, " As
it is truly said ... a holy action can proceed only from a
holy principle or disposition," etc. Second, we ask the reader
to note how unavoidably Dr. Bledsoe falls into the true doctrine :
*' holy action jjroceeds from," " a sinful action may resvlt from,"
etc. Surely that which " proceeds " and " results from " antece-
dents, is an efi'ect. Common sense wall assert its rights. Third,
Dr. Bledsoe thinks that the " agent is himself the author " of
"the design, or intention, or motive," which is "the principle
from which the virtuous act is supposed to derive its character."
Very well. He has taught us that all functions of intelligence,
and all functions of emotion or feeling, are passivities ; the will
is the only active power. Kow, then, if the agent is author him-
self of the principle of his volition, he must have originated that
principle by an act of choice ! What principle of '•' design, or
intention, or motive," regulated that prior act of choice ? And
must he not have chosen to choose ? Thus Dr. Bledsos is hope-
lessly ntaugled in the endless 7'egressus and in Mr. "VTatson's
fatal refvitation at once.

But, fourth, and chiefly, let us look a little more narrowly at
this self-originated " design, or intention, or motive " in Adam,
from which Dr. Bledsoe admits his unholy action proceeded.
What was this intention ? Merely to gain knowledge, and please

THE PHILOSOPHY OF VOLITION. 245

his palate uaturally and iunocently ? That was not all ; for as
Dr. Bledsoe justly argues, the appetency for these natural goods
being implanted by his Maker, was not essentially sinfid, but
legitimate iu its proper bounds. Th^re was an intention to
gratify this unrighteously. There was intelligent intention to
prefer these natural goods to duty. Now let this " intention "
be inspected. "VMio fails to see that it involves a subjective
appetency, a desire ; the new expression of a new and per-
verted disposition; the hcib'dtts, namely, of unrighteous self-will?
While we knoAV very well that this new disposition, qualifying
Adam's soul now, was synchronous with the evil act, we also
know that, in the order of production, it was precedent to it, and
so qualified it as evil. Thus Dr. Bledsoe's pretended analysis
is only an attempt to wrap up the great facts of the precedent
disposition and appetency under the word " intention." But,
we repeat, intention involves them. '' Intentlo''' is a subjective
and active directing of the soul upon (tendere in) an objective
end. This is the analysis of common sense. Every lawyer and
juryman thinks that, iu proving "evil intention" on the mur-
derer, he has proved "malice."

Dr. Bledsoe thinks that if Edwards argues that Adam's first
holy volition would never have taken place unless God implanted
a principle of holiness to prompt it, he is equally bound to argue
that the first sin could never have occurred unless the Maker
first implanted an evil principle to prompt it. Our author for-
gets, in this ingenious cavil, that there is an important contrast
in the essence of holiness and sin. Sin in principles and acts,
is n _2)riva(lve quality. Holiness is a positive one. ' H djiafnla
kazlv rj dvofiia. Discrepancy from law is sin. But only positive
conformity with the standard is holiness. Now surely it is one
thing to say that a finite, dependent creature cannot, if created
iu a state of defect, out of that defect originate the positive ; and
a very difierent one to say that this finite, mutable creature,
naturally endued with the positive, may admit the negative de-
fect. Dr. Bledsoe's logic is precisely this : because a candle
sixteen inches long will never shine miles;' it be positively lighted,
ergo, it will never cease shining unless it be positively extin-
guished. That might follow as to an infinite candle ; but this
one, being but a few inches long, has only to be completely let
alone to burn itself out.

246 THE rHILOSOPHY OF YOLITIOX.

3. If onr tlaeorr Avere not true, no cortaiiity -uoiild attend any
form of influence Avhicli man exerts npon man. Education
■sv^ould yield no definite results in the formation of character.
Human control over a fello^v-m-an, beyond the material <2;rasp of
the controlling person, could never be exej'ted ■\\-ith full certainty ;
for the way in which human control exerts itself is by address-
ing some inducement to some known subjective appetency of
the person governed, which is known to be adequate to occasion
the designed action. For instance, may not thje employer pre-
sent to his servant's native desire for gain a pecuniary reward,
which will certainly result in the performance of the service?
Does not the teacher present to the urchin's desire of bodily
welfare a positive threat of the birch, modifying that native ap-
petency into active fear, which will result in punctual and unfail-
ing obedience ? Dr. Bledsoe knows that this is often done. He
lias friends, from whom, unless death or casualty intervene, ho
knows his requests will secure an infallible compliance, in at
least some things, lloir does he know this ? If volitions are
efficiently caused by " no antecedent in or out of the mind," he
lias no right to think it — no means to know it. His doctrine is,
that every antecedent condition of choice may be there, looking
to the confidently expected volition, and yet there is always the
possibility that the will may fly off at a tangent, as men popu-
larly sav, into the opposite determination. He has no right to be
entirely certain that the best friend he has in the world is going
to comply with his most reasonable request, though able to do so.

4. The free volition which should arise exactly according to
this theory would be neither rational nor moral. The very
ground of our judging these qualities to an act is, that we recog-
nize it as 23roceeding out of a rational or a moral motive, which
was efficient thereof. Dr. Bledsoe is so unable to blind his
eves to this fact, that he says, while the rational or moral vo-
lition has no cause, it has its ground in reason, of coiu'se.
But what is tJie ground of an act? The phra,se is a metaphor.
The ground of a thing is that on which it stands, as r. house on
its foundation. The ground of a volition is the state of soul on
which it stands for its being, ^'hat is this but its cause / The
ground of an act which yet is not its cause, would be a ground
that was not a ground. How can a volition derive i)ositive or

THE rHILOiSOPHY OF VOLITION. 247

certain moral character from itb rational or moral " groiind " in
the mind, unless the volition is positively and certainly con-
nected therewith? Ltjt common sense answer. We see a man
p3rform an act in outwaivl form charitable. We ask, " What
made you do that ? " He answers, "Nothing; the volition just
cairiQ so." Instantly we "withdraw oiir moral approbation. The
man, instead of appearing approvable, now seems only silly.

5. Dr. Bledsoe's scheme breaks down utterly when brought to
the test of man's free choice concerning his summuni hcmmn.
Let natural good and evil be presented in alternative before the
free soul ; as for instance, sickness and health. Let him be free
to choose between them simply for their own sakes, without any
complication of the question by connected consequences or moral
restrictions. Let him be invited to exercise his freedom by elect-
ing sickness rather than health, simply for the sake of being sick.
Is there a particle of uncertainty? Is there the faintest possi-
bility that he will so elect? Yet is that man's election just as
free and rational, though morally necessitated or made ceitain by
the efficient influence of his own common sense and natural de-
sire of welfare, as any other volition he ever performs.

6. Every rational being iu the universe, except man, is an in-
stance exactly against Dr. Bledsoe's theory of free agency. God's
holy volitions are morally necessitated by his eternal and immut-
able perfections. Is he, therefore, not free? The Bible itself
tells us that "he cannot lie," "he cannot be tempted to evil."
Then, according to this philosophy of contingent volitions, none
of God's moral volitions are fi-ee ! Our Lord Jesus Christ, as we
have seen, ivas horn a "holy thing." According to Dr. Bledsoe,
he was therefore not a free agent. Holy angels, as we are ex-
pressly taught by scripture, had holiness as their " first estate,"
and they are now made known to us as " elect angels." Kow,
Dr. Bledsoe himself says he believes in the infallible "persever-
ance of the elect." So it appears these angels must be certainly
determined to holy volitions, and therefore they are not free
agents ; and if they are not free agents, they cannot have moral
character ; so the holy angels cannot be holy, because they are
indefectibly holy ! Again, according to Dr. Bledsoe, elect sinners
will infallil^ly persevere in so many, at least, of the acts of holy
volition as will maintain their spiritual union \A\h their Ke-

248 THE PHILOSOPHY OF VOLITION.

deemer; for Dr. Bledsoe believes iu the "perseverance of tlie
elect" — -tliougli not iu tlie "perseverance of the saints." Now,
there are some " mighty curious " corollaries attached to this doc-
trine of the "perseverance of the elect." God's decree of their
election to glory is conditioned ou his foresight that they will
not only believe on Christ, but continue in faith to the end. But
if the creature's volitions are contingent, God's prescience of
them must be contingent, since he knows them just as they are
to be. Here, then, we have a perseverance grounded ou the
fact that they wall persevere, and a perseverance which is but con-
tingent, i. e., a jjerseverance that may not persevere! But our
main point is to argue that, as to those persevering elecfc, at least
those volitions by which they cleave to Christ must be certain.
But Dr. Bledsoe's theory teaches that if they are certain, they are
not free. Once more ; lost souls and evil angels are infallibly
certain never to will holy volitions. Then, their unholy ones are
not free, and therefore not blameworthy!

We quote, under this head, from Wedey on Onglnal Shi, y^.
286, 287, in order that Dr. Bledsoe may see how much title he
has to call himself a Wesleyan. Dr. Taylor, of Norwich, had ad-
vanced— precisely Dr. Bledsoe's doctrine, on p. 28 of his Iieolew —
the proposition that a being " must exist, and must use his intel-
lectual powers hefore he can be Tujliteousr Wesley, adopting
Dr. Jenning's reply, answers precisely according to our argument
in this sixth head :

"But according to this reasoning, CJirist could not be righteous at his birth. You
answer, ' He existed before he was made flesh. ' I reply, He did, as God. But the
man Christ Jesus did not. . . . According to your reasoning, then, the man Chris'-
Jesus could not be rigJtteom at Ids birth. "

' ' Nay, according to this reasoning, God could not be righteous from eternity,
because he must exist before he was righteous. You answer, ' My reasoning would
hold even with respect to God, were it true that he ever did begin to exist ; but
neither the existence nor the holiness of God was prior to each other. ' Nay, but if
his existence was not prior to his holiness — if he did not exist before he was holy —
your assertion, that ' every being must exist before it is righteous, ' is not true. "

7. The Bible doctrines of God's certain foreknowledge of
men's volitions, of his foreordination of them (see Acts ii. 23 ;
Isaiah x. 5-7), of his prediction of their voluntary acts, and of
his providence over such acts, present an unanswerable demon-
stration of our theory of volition. We shall not fatigue Chris-
tian readers by citing many scriptures to prove any one of these

THE THILOSOPHY OP VOLITION. 249

doctrines. God's providence is "liis most lioly, wise and pow-
erful sustaining and governing all his creatures and all their
actions." That his efficacious providence extends, in some
mysterious way, to men's volitions, is expressly assei-ted in the
Bible. " The king's heart is in the hand of the Lord as the riv-
ers of water: he turneth it whithersoever he will." (Pro v. xxi.
1 ; 2 Sam. xvi. 11 ; xxiv. 11, etc.) Is God's providence here
efficacious? If one answers, "No," he contradicts the Scrip-
ture, and robs God of his sovereignty. If he answers "Yes,"
as he must, the question is settled; for in causing this volition
certainly to arise in the man's soul, God has procured the opera-
tion of some sort of causation. The argument is so true that it
is hard to express it "vvithout uttering a truism. But, then, that
volition, which still is free and responsible, was not uncaused.
Now the species of causation which we assign for it, subjective
motive, is beyond question more consistent with the man's free
agency than any other jDOSsible species. Let Dr. Bledsoe try
his hand at explaining how there can be any other possible
species of efficient causation of that volition in that man's soul,
more compatible with his free agency therein, than subjective
motive acting spontaneously, yet according to the known law of
his disposition. But we need not press him so far. The argu-
ment is in these simple and inevitable propositions : God effi-
ciently controls the man's volition ; therefore the volition had
some efficient. But the essence of Dr. Bledsoe's theory is, that
volition has no other efficient antecedent, either in or out of the
mind, than the mind itself.

Again, God has predicted a multitude of volitions to be formed
in subsequent times by free agents. He has foretold them posi-
tively. He has, so to speak, made the credit of his veracity re-
sponsible for their certain future occurrence. Here we have
two arguments. These predictions im]3h' a certain foreknow-
ledge in God; and from this foreknowledge we argue the cer-
tainty of the events foreknown. Again, inasmuch as God is
well acquainted with the feebleness and fickleness of man, and
the uncertainty of human affairs in themselves, unless, when he
predicted that a certain man should freely do a certain act, he
purposed effectually to bring the doing of it to pass, he could
not safely or wisely have committed himself to the prediction.

250 THE PHILOSOPHY OP VOLITION.

"Would Dr. Bledsoe, knowing tliat tlie casliier of liis publishing
lionse was both poor, fickle, foolish, mortal, and of iincertaiu
moral principle, like to pledge his credit that this cashier shall,
on the first day of Jiine, 1885, infallibly pay a given paper mer-
chant five thousand dollars, unless he felt, while giving the
pledge, that he himself possessed some eifeetual mode of causing
the cashier to do it ? God, in the Bible, pledged liis credit to
many such things.

But God's universal and infallible foreknowledge is sufficient
to prove our doctrine. Dr. Bledsoe cites Edwards as present-
ing this argument in this comprehensive form : " When the ex-
istence of a thing is infallibly and iudissolubly connected with
something else which has already had existence, then its exist-
ence is necessary ; but the future volitions of moral agents are
infalhbly and iudissolubly connected with the foreknowledge of
God, and therefore tJiey are necessary." This is so conclusive
that Dr. Bledsoe admits frecpiently that God's prescience j)rove3
ilie certainty of free volitions. Thus, p. 141 : "It is freely con-
ceded that whatever God foreknows will most certainly and
infallibly come to pass." Watson, in his Inst'dutes (Part II.
Chap. lY.), admits that God's prescience refutes the idea of any
iincertaintij in the volitions foreseen. He says that, when he
teaches the "contingency" of volitions, he does not mean their
uncertainty, but their freedom. " Contingency is not opposed
to certa'rnty, but to necessity.''^ He then proceeds to define the
species of necessity, which he denies of free volitions, in the
following unmistakable terms : " The very nature of this contro-
versy fixes this as the precise meaning of the term. The ques-
tion is not, in point of fact, about the certahity of moral actions,
that is, whether they will happen or not ; but about the nature
of them, whetJit'i' free or constrained,'* etc. It thus appears that
the necessity against which Watson protests is the necessity of
constraint. Abating the novel and unusual definition of the
"word contingency, Watson's statement is one which every Cal-
vinist can accept. But Dr. Bledsoe certainly cannot adopt that
view of "cei-tainty" in voHtions which the leading Wesleyan
authority here gives us.

The argument from God''s prescience to our theory of volition
%vas stated by us {IteviGv:, October, 1876) in a form to bring out

THE PHILOSOPHY OF VOLITIOX. 251

articulately a link wliich Edwards leaves to be implied. That
wbicli is bj an infallible mind certainly foreseen, must be certain
to occur. Nothing -would be certain to occur in the sphere of
<lependent being, unless there were some efficient of its certainty.
Does anything come absolutely ex nllulo f Eyen Dr. Bledsoe
concedes that it does not. Well, then, when a thing is certainly
to come, it is equally clear that the something out of which it
comes must be such a something as will not fail to produce it.
Por if it may fail to produce it, then the thing is not certain to
come. This is the idea of efficient causation: a jjroducin"*
agency which will not fail. Now, then, unless the event be cer-
tain to arise, no correct mind will have a certain belief it will
arise. If any mind correctly and certainly expects it to arise, it
must be because there is seen some efficient cause to make it
arise. For since nonentity cannot produce, an event that did
not have some certainly efficient cause would not be certain to
cccur. Every gambler knows that the dice which always fall
six up, are loaded. But where will you find that certain efficient
of the free, foreseen volition ? Our theory presents the answer
most consistsnt with free agency ; for if you place the causation
anywhere save in the efficient influence of subjective motive,
under the regulative control of the soul's own disposition, free
agency is lost.

Such is the point of this unanswerable argument. Dr. Bled-
Boe is hugely offended because we intimated that he misunder-
stood or evaded its point. If the reader will examine the elev-
enth section of the Examination of Edwards, he will see the
mode in which our author proposes to resolve it. He tells us in
the outset that, "to many minds, even among distinguished
philosophers, the prescience of Deity and the free agency of
man have appeared to be irreconcilable." Among these are
Dugald Stuart, Dr. Campbell, and Locke. Yet Dr. Bledsoe be-
lieves that he can easily remove the argument w^hich convinced
them! How does the reader suppose this exploit is wrought?
By begging the verj'' question in debate, whether volition is an
event withoiit efficient cause ; and by deciding, in opposition to
the intuitive judgment of all other philosophers and common
men, that in the mental world changes may, and do, arise without
efficient cause. He would have us draw a distinction between.

252

THE THILOSOrHY OF VOLITION.

"logical certainty" an:l a "causal certaiuty." He admits that
God's certain foreknowledge of a Yolition must imply its "logi-
cal certainty;" but lie denies tliat wo are entitled to infer there-
from its " causal certainty." Let liim express Lis idea in another
form (page 135): " But is this indissoluble connection" (of the-
occurrence of volition with God's certain foresight thereof) " at
all incoiasistent with the contingency of the event known ? Tlds
is the question.'''' ... To settle this question, . . . "let us sup-
pose, to adopt the language of President Edwards, * that
nonentity is about to bring forth,' and that an event comes into
being v/ichout any cause of its existence. This event then
exists ; it is seen, and it is known to exist. Kow, even on thia-
wild supposition, there is an infallible and indissoluble connec-
tion between the existence of the event and the knowledge of it ;
and hence it is necessary, in the sense above explained. But
what has this necessary connection to do with the cause of its
existence ? " By supposing such a case, Dr. Bledsoe endeavors
to show that the "logical certainty," which he concedes, does
not imply a " causal certainty," which he denies. But the reply
is very simple : Such a case cannot be supposed. That " nonen-
tity can bring forth," is a proposition which the reason rejects
as a self-evident impossibility. Does not he himself admit that
it is a " wild supposition ? " If it might be assumed, then w-e
might admit that a " logical certainty" does not imply a " causal
certainty." But it may not be assumed. On the contrary, we
assert that, because the reason tells us by its most fundamental
intuition that every event must have a cause, the " causal cer-
tainty " does, and must, follow from the logical certainty. If we
are cei'tain a given event is going to happen at a given time,
then we are intuitively certain that the eflficient cause of that
event is going to be present at that time. Our reason tells us
that otherwise the event would not be. What is this but the in-
tuitive judgment on which all valid inductive science proceeds ?
Unsettle this connection between the logical and the causal cer-
tainty, and a posterloH argument is at an end. The very or-
ganoii for ascertaining natural laws is l)roken up ; the foundation
of the Teason is uprooted. Dr. Bledsoe exclaims, that then we
bring the law of causation to eomplete t!ie arjjument fi'om God's
prescience to the efficienL influence of motive. Of cour&e "VNe

THE PHILOSOPnY OF ABOLITION. 253

•do. His complaint betraj's the very fact whose intimation ho so
resented. Of course the intuition that no change comes tin-
caiised is an implied premise of Edwards' enthymeme. He
did not expand it in that place, because he did not imagine that
any one would argue from tlio opposite and impossible supposi-
tion that nonentity can bring forth events.

It is wholly unnecessary to follow Dr. Bledsoe through all the
confusions of his attempted evasion from the grasp of our argu-
ment. In one place, for instance, he endeavors to insinuate — -
what he dares not assert plainly — that the intuition which de-
mands a cause for every event is not binding in this argument,
by bringing in the assertion of Stewart, that the deductions of
geometry are not founded on its axioms, but on its definitions.
"We might pause to ask whether it is creditable to one who has
written on the philosophy of mathematics to be misled by this
very one-sided statement. He should long ago have found its
solution in the obvious view, that w^hile the properties of figures
and bodies described in the definitions of geometry are, of
course, the subject matter of geometrical reasonings — the things
geometers reason about — still the axioms, or primitive judgments
of the reason aliout quantity are the logical foundations of all
the reasonings about properties. But why intrude that old, quib-
bling debate ? Could geometrical reasoning proceed without any
axiomatic truths? Can philosophy proceed without the funda-
mental axiom of cause ? After all. Dr. Bledsoe does not dare to
say it can. Even in the construction of his sophism, he admits
iliat it would be a " wild supposition." The outrage done to rea-
son by this attempt to sunder a *' causal" from a "logical" cer-
tainty is so great that Dr. Bledsoe's own mind recalcitrates, and
constrains him to a fatal concession. {Examinaiion of Edward Sy
p. 146.) *'If Edwards means that a thing cannot be foreknown
unless it has a sufficient ground and reason for its existence, and
does not of itself come forth out of nothing, we are not at all con-
cerned to deny his position." Now, why should Dr. Bledsoe de-
ceive himself by calling the efficient cause of volition a sufficient
*•' ground and reason " ? Is volition only a logical inference ? He,
of all men, is compelled to deny that proposition. We properly
speak of a " sufficient ground and reason" for logical conclusion.
"Why, then, seek to hide under this nomenclature of logic what

254 THE PHILOSOPHY OF VOLITION.

is nothing else but efficient viotlve of tlie act of soul ? The only-
sufficient ground and reason, in whose certain action God sees,
the certainty of the volition, is the subjective onotice which, he
sees, determines that volition. It is true, Dr. Bledsoe proceeds
to speak, as he so often does, of volition as "proceeding from
the mind, acting in view of motives." First, we remark on this
subterfuge : here is the old and obstinate confusion of objective
inducement with true, subjective motive ; our author still is under
the hallucination that "motive" is something ohjective, at whicJh
the mind is looking. But, second, has not Dr. Bledsoe said many-
times that " motive," whatever it may be, is only the occasion, and
not the cause, of the mental determination? The question then
arises, since the objective, at tvhicMlie mind looks, does not effi-
ciently dispose or influence the mind to choice, what does f Does
the mind determine itself to choice? Dr. Bledsoe gives up that
solution as contradictory. (See his Sixteenth Section, Examina-
tion of Edivards.) Then what does? Does '"nonentity bring
forth " ? And here we commend to Dr. Bledsoe's lips one of the
few valid specimens of his own philosophizing. He teaches us,
very correctl}^, that it is not the agent which is the cause of effects,
but it is his action which causes it. The being or existence of a.
given agent is not what is fruitful of effects ; it may exist for agea
■ — as the arsenic has existed in the mineral ore ever since the cre-
ation, and caused the death of no animal — without generating a
given effect. It is when it acts that it produces effects. "While
we loosely speak of the agent as cause, yet, in strictness of speech,
it is the agent's appropriate action which is the real cause of the re-
sultant change. This is excellent doctrine, and according to it.
Dr. Bledsoe contradicts himself when he speaks of the mind as
causing or producing volitions, and yet denies that any antece-
dent action in the mind produces it.

Dr. Bledsoe virtually concedes that, to the human reason, at
least, a logical certainty must imply a causal certainty, by the
subterfuge to which he is at last driven, on his 147th page. It
is, in substance, t lis : that, although our minds are sq consti-
tuted that it would be absurdity and contradiction in us to think
a thing certain to occur, without thinking there will be any cer-
tain thing anywhere to make it occur, yet it uuiy not be so with
Ood's mind ; and it is very pres umptuous in us to assume it. That

THE PHILOSOrHY OF VOLITION. 255

is to saj, although God assures us that our spirits are formed iu
his image and Hkeuess ; although we are assured that every con-
stitutive feature of the human reason which is a mental excellence,
also exists in God's mind in the higher grade of an infinite rational
perfection; although God enjoins us by the very intuitions which
he has implanted as our regulative laws of thought, not to think
that an event will be certain to arise without any cause certainly
efficient of its rise ; yet it is presumptuous iu Calvinists to say
that God certainly will not perpetrate the mental solecism which
he lias made impossible for us, formed in his image ! Dr. Bled-
soe thinks that somehow God's infinitude may make such a differ-
ence between his thought and ours that a species of thinking
which would be preposterous iu us may be legitimate for him.
This is substantially the solution which Archbishop King gives,
to escape the stress of our argument from God's foreknowledge.
If the reader would see a calm and masterly refutation of Dr.
Bledsoe and Archbishop King on this point, let him consult
again the "Wesleyan text book, Watson's TJieological Institutes,
Part II., Chap. IV. He there shows that the position is "dan-
gerous," ''monstrous," and in premises "anti-scriptural." Ho
asserts that the fact that God is incomprehensible does not ])re-
vent our knowing him truly and correctly, up to the limits of our
finite knowledge. He teaches that his prescience differs from
ours, not in kind, but in degree. He declares that if God's attri-
butes, both rational and moral, are not really like the scrip-
tural, human conceptions of them, but mere analogues, then
the foundation of religion is gone. Is Dr. Bledsoe a Wes-
leyan ?

Again, we beg the reader to fix the true question before his
mind. The question is not, whether God has modes of cogni-
tion inconceivably above ours. Doubtless he has. The question
is, whether God has modes of cognition contradictory to those
which he has himself made not only valid but imperative for us,
created in his image. If one of us were to convince himself that
an event is certainly coming, and yet that there is nothing
anywhere certainly efficient of its coming, we should outrage
our reason. Does God commit that very outrage in the higher
use of his reason ? We answer, no ! And we say, no, not be-
cause his doing so would be incomprehensiljle, but because it

256 THE PHILOSOPHY OF TOLITION.

"would be coutraclictory. Dr. Bledsoe sliall here define tliis dif-
ference. P. 221 : " Tliere is some difference, I have supposed,
"between disbelieving a thing because we cannot see how it is, and
disbelieving it because we very clearly see that it cannot be any
how at all." This is weU said ; because we see that, according to
that law of cause which God has impressed both on nature and
reason, tlie thing that is certain to happen must have, somewhere,
an efScient which will certainly make it happen ; and inasmuch
as the efficiency of subjective motive over volition is the only ex-
planation tin r^of, consistent with free agency, therefore we kno^v^
that when God foreknows volitions certainly, our theory of mo-
tives producing volitions is true.

Dr. Bledsoe takes an attitude of humihty, in order to escape
this argument. He falls back on his ignorance. He chides us
for assuming, as he charges, that God has no way of knowing
certainly the contingent volition, because we cannot explain it.
But let not the reader be deceived. Dr. Bledsoe thinks that he
can explain ifc none the less, and this by the Mohnist scheme of
McleM'id Tnedia^ which, he tells us, he adopted with aU his heart,
•^vhen he became acquainted with it. Church history tells us that
Bome hag never had the audacity to adopt it, in the teeth of the
Scriptures, the Fathers, and philosophy. But Dr. Bledsoe is a
bold man. In his Iievieio, pp. 47-51, we have his attempt to es-
cape our exposure of Molinism ; an attempt made up of confu-
sions and misstatements, in which he so loses himself as to as-
cribe to us precisely what we were confuting. "We will not weary
the reader by unwinding all these tortuous and entangled threads.
It will be shorter to restate the problem.

In the latter part of the sixteenth century, the Pelagian theory
of volition, which was substantially Dr. Bledsoe's, found itself
crushed by this argument from God's certain prescience. To
escape this refutation, Louis Molina, a Spanish Jesuit, devised
his theory of mediate foreknowledge, w^hich he introduced to the
learned world, A. D. 1538, in his book entitled L'J>cri Arhitrii
Concordia <-nin Gratiae Donis, Dr. Murdoch, on Mosheim, Yol.
III., p. Ill, states his doctrine thus: ""What depends on the
voluntary action of his creatures, that is, future CdrdingencieSy
God knows only mediately^ by knowing all the circumstances in
which these free agents will be placed, what motives will be

THE PHILOSOPHY OF VOLITION. 257

present to tlieir luiuds, and thus foreseeing and knowing liow
they Avill act."

Those orders of the Eoniish clergy who folloAved Augustine
resisted this doctrine with all their might. The controversy was
ardent, because the Jesuits, according to their usual policy, de-
fended their member with a strict partisan zeal. The question
"«"as referred to Rome, "where a special commission of theolo-
gians was raised to examine it, called the Congregatlo de A uxiliis
(Graiiae). Mosheim, who made no secret of his leanings to
Arminianism, says (Yol. III., p. 327) that after long debates, this
commission actually reached a decision, which was reported to
the Pope for his sanction and publication. The substance of
this was, that this " opinion of Molina approximated to those of
the Pelagians, which had been condemned" by the Koman
Chiu'ch. y^e have, then, the suffrages of Eome herself, in ad-
dition to early history, in support of our assertion that !Dr.
Bledsoe is a virtual Pelagian, for he says that he heartily adopts
the doctrine. But the usual crooked and time-serving policy of
the popes, and their fear of the growing ascendency of the Jesuit
order, j^revented the publication of this decision.

Dr. Bledsoe and we both agree that, si'-ice God's cognitions

are perfect, eternal, coetaneous, and unchangeable, none of them

can have arisen deductively, after the method of our inferential

and "discursive" processes of logic. All must be j^i'imary and

intuitive. The theologians mean this : that it cftnuot be that

God, like us, first knew premises, and then cifterwardsy by a

process of derivation and a succession of thought, learned from

them conclusions not before known to the divine mind. For

this is inconsistent wdth the eternity and completeness of the

divine omniscience. But no theologian means to deny that this

immediate intuition of God takes in truths according to their

actual relations. Doubtless, since his knowledge is absolutely

correct, it takes truths exactly as they are ; but many truths are

truths of relation. These, therefore, the divine mind, while it

takes them iip intuitively, takes as related truths. For instance,

in the history of the material world, God had no occasion to learn

the power of a given cause, a posteriori^ from its effect, as we

do, since he eternally and immediately knew both cause and

effect. But he doubtless always foresaw that cause and its effect
Vol.. ni.— 17.

258 THE PHILOSOPHY OF VOLITION.

as tliiis related, because, in fact, tliey were thus related ; and bis-
intuition is always true to fact, being absolutely correct. Kor
■will the considerate mind have a particle of difficulty in admit-
ting that there may be immediate intuition of a truth of relation.
Are not several of our own primitive judgments of this kind?
"What else is this : ''If two magnitudes are respectively equal
to a third, they must be equal to each other" ?

'\^'ith this obvious explanation, we make our first remark
agamst this ascription to God of a scientJa media. However
Dr. Bledsoe may have modified the theory for himself in his last
Jtevieic, under the stress of our criticism, it was, in the hands of its
inventors, an ascription to God of an inferential knowledge. If
it is not such in Dr. Bledsoe's hands now, he is evidently im-
proving somewhat in his theology ; our tuition is doing him
some good ! Why did its own inventors name it sclentia mecUay.
mediate foreknowledge, except because they thought its conclu-
sions were mediated to the divine mind by premises ? And do
they not state expressly what those premises, as they suppose^
are? — "the circumstances in which these free agents wiU be
placed, and what motives will be present to thei^ minds." What
else did the inventors mean, by placing this species of cognition
between God's sclentia simjyhx, or knowledge of the infinite pos-
sible, and his scientia visionis, or knowledge of all the uncontin-
gent actual ? Surely these include all possible forms of the di-
vine intuition. The intermediate class they thought, therefore,
to be a class of inferential cognitions. So, certainly, judges Dr.
Hodge {TJieology, Yol. I., p. 400) : " The kind of knowledge this
theory supposes cannot belong to God, because it is inferentiah
It is deduced from a consideration of second causes and their
influence, and, therefore, is inconsistent with the perfections of.
God, whose knowledge is not discursive, but independent and
intuitive." This makes our fii'st objection against scientia inedia-
sufficiently clear.

Our second is an argument ad Tioininem ; but it is a just one.
It proceeds against Molina on grounds which we do not hold^
hut wMcTh he does ; and it is, therefore, fair to hold him to them
and their consequences. It is to be regretted that Dr. Bledsoe
did not perceive this obvious character of our argiiment on this
head, as he might have thus saved himself from sundry confu-

THE THILOSOPHY OF VOLITION. 259'

sions wliicli are especially preposterous. The Molinist supposes
that the divine mind itifsrs what the human free will may please
to do, *' from all the circumstances in which these free agents
will be placed, and the motives present to their mind." But on
his and Dr. Bledsoe's theory of volition, these circumstances
and motives furnish no ground for any inference ; because they
say that there is no efficient or certain tie of influence between
the free volition and the circumstances or motives, or both
together. Of all the men in the world, they are the last who
have any business with such an inference as to what free voli-
tions will be ; because the very heart of their theory cuts all tie
of efficient influence between the proposed premises and conclu-
sion. We Calvinists are the men who are entitled consistently
to draw that inference, because we believe that there is an effi-
cient tie between subjective motive and volition. We have not,
like Dr. Bledsoe and his Molinist friends, cut our premises and
conclusions fatally asunder. And we, reasoning experimentally,
after that inferential manner suitable to temporal and finite
minds, actually do infer, in a multitude of ca«es, what free agents
will choose, from our knowledge of " circumstances and mo-
tives," And we can see how, if God did also reason deductively
— -which he does not — ^as the Molinist supposes, he also could,-
in all cases, infer what all free agents will choose to do, from
his prescience of their " circumstances and motives ;" that is,
provided our Calvinistic theory of the efficient influence of mo-
tives is the true one. And, inasmuch as God sees all truths,
both truths of relation and all others, not deductively, but im-
mediately and intuitively, we suppose that God eternally and
intuitively sees what free agents are going to choose, in relation
to the foreseen motives which are going to cause these free
choices. That is, we suppose God's intuitive prescience is ex-
actly according to the actual fact ; and as these future fi-ee voli-
tions, when they come, are to come out of the efficient influence
of motives in the men's spirits, God foresees them as thus con-
nected. And this is the way, we suppose, God has, not a scien-
tia media, but a scientia visionis, of all that free agents are going-
to choose ; a scientia vision is which, while not an inference fi'om
premises after the mode of our successive, discursive thought, is
yet an intuition of truths in their destined relations. We are

260 THE PHILOSOPTTY OF VOLITION.

certain tlie matter is now clear to tlie candid reader, and we even
venture to liope, to Dr. Bledsoe. One tiling is clear to all except
liim : wlietlier God's foreknowledge of free volitions were an in-
ference from premises, or an intuition of triitlis in relation, it
must be equally impossible for a correctly thinking mind to
think the two parts of the truth in relation, if Dr. Bledsoe were
right in saying the relation does not exist. But this is his posi-
tion : "Motives are not related to volitions by any tie of certain
effieiencv." And we humbly presume that God's omniscience
no more enables him to think this erroneous solecism, which no
rational man can think, than God's infinite holiness could enable
him consistently to do an act w^hich would be intrinsically wicked
if done by his inferior, man. There is the sum of this whole
matter.

8. The way is now prepared for our eighth argument in sup-
port of the efficient influence of subjective motives over voli-
tions. As we saw it was implied in the Bible doctrine of origi-
nal sin, so it is necessarily implied in the doctrine of regenera-
tion. "Wliat is it ? That God so exerts a gracious efficiency
npon the depraved soul, — called in Scripture the " new creation
imto good works," the "new birth," or birth from above, the
" quickening," the "illumination," the " heavenly calling," etc. —
that the souls hitherto certainly self-determined to ungodliness
are now graciously yet freely determined to certain perseverance
in godliness. They " are created unto good works, which God
hath bef<5re ordained that they should walk in them." They
" are kept by the power of God, through faith, unto salvation."
They cannot practice habitual sin, because they " are born of a
living and incorruptible seed, which liveth and abideth forever."
Such is the work. Now, it is impossible that this permanent
effect can be graciously propagated, consistently with free
agency, except on the theory of a tie of efficiency between the
renewed disposition, with its holy sulijective motives, and the
free volitions of the soul in this gracious state. This is the
miiiiminn postulate on which the doctrine of regeneration can
possibly hold, and man yet remain a free agent. If grace turns
man into a stock, or a machine, or an iiTational sentient beast,
which moves at the spur of a mere instinct provoked from with-
out, then it is conceivable how grace may certainly and regularly

THE PHILOSOPHY OF VOLITION. 261

evoke the series of acts which is outwardly conformed to godh-
ness. But then, where is free agency? If we retain free agency,
we must either hold to the causative and efficient influence of
motives over free volitions, or we must give up the Bible doc-
trine of regeneration.

Dr. Bledsoe makes an impotent attempt to reconcile the diffi-
culty. In the chapt3r cited from his Theodicy, he teaches that
motives, while not the efficients of volitions, are their invariable
antecedents. The judgments of the intelligence, if correct, may
be antecedents to wrong choices. The desires of the heart, if
perverse, may be antecedents to wrong choices. Both these
functions of spirit he supposes to be purely passive. He can
concede, then, that grace may omnipotently renovate these pas-
sive antecedents of free choice, without infringing the freedom
of the will ; and this is regeneration. Such is his scheme. The
fatal defect is, that according to that theory, which is his cor-
ner-stone, such regeneration would not ensure a single holy act,
much less an infallible perseverance in holy strivings. For
these "necessitated" states of passivity, correct judgments of
intellect, and right desires, he tells us, are not efficients, but only
antecedents, to volitions. These arise in the wiU itself, "not
determined, but determinations," connected by no tie of effi-
ciency with " any antecedents in or out of the mind." What can
be plainer, then, than this : that according to Dr. Bledsoe, God
might "necessitate" these antecedents, and yet procure not a
single holy volition ! The whole scheme is naught.

9. The last argument we adduce is the well-kno-^Ti reductio ad^
absiirdinn, which has descended from the scholastics to Presi-
dent Edwards. If the will is self-determined, since this faculty
has but the single and sole function of volition, it must be by a
prior volition that it determines itself to the given choice. But
now the question recurs. What determined the will to that prior
volition ? The only answer is, an earlier volition, still prior to
this ; because the faculty of choice, which is supposed to exert
the self-determination, has but the one function. Thus, it must
have chosen to choose, and we have a ridiculous regressus, to
which there is no consistent end. Dr. Bledsoe endeavors to
escape this argument by two expedients. One is to say that he
does not use the words " the will self-determined," " the will

S62 THE PHILOSOPHY OF YOLITIOX.

-determines itself," along with all prior advocates of Lis theory
of free will. They ought not to have used such language, he
liolds ; it is not correct. He tells us they have been all off the
track in debating the question whether motives determine the
will, or whether the vnM determines itself ; for, in fact, the will is
not determined at all ; it determines. Its sole function, volition,
is not an act detertnhied, hut a determination. This is as pretty
a conundrum as was ever made up of a mere verbal quibble.
'' Yolition is simply a determination," qu^th 'a. But did ever
one hear of an action without an agent ? ^ ho, or what, does the
determining in this determhiatio f Only the will, says Dr. Bledsoe.
"Then the will determines — what ? Oh ! says Dr. Bledsoe, the
will determines not itself, but its volition. But what is volition
save a function of ifrdf .^ Then the stubborn fact remains, that
on his theory the "v^dll does determine itself. All the rest of the
■semi-Pelagian and Pelagian worlds were not fools, nor was Dr.
JBledsoe the only wise man among them. The phrase " the will
determines itself" is, on their theory, perfectly correct and un-
avoidable. Dr. Bledsoe's other evasion is to blink the fact on
'which Edwards' argument in part hinges, that when the specific
faculty of will is made self-determining, then our opponents are
shut up to the concession that it must determine itself to choose
iby an act of choice, since this is its sole function, viz., emitting
acts of choice. The other functions of spirit all belong to other
faculties.

From this point of view the reader can easily see how short-
sighted and impotent is the effort which our author makes, in
many places, to A\Test this famous argument from Edwards and
turn it against him. Dr. Bledsoe pleads that the only way for
ws Calvinists to avoid the absurd result of a regressus without
end is to adopt his notion of volitions arising in the will, deter-
mined by nothing ; for, reasons he, if Calvinists say that volition
cannot arise save from some other mental modification or func-
tion, prior to volition, and the efficient thereof, then he has
equal right to say that this prior mental modification must also
have had its prior efficient to produce it. And if we demur to
his logic, he will prostrate us with the same formidable maxim,
ex niJiilo niliil, with which we threatened him when he advanced
his volition without efficient cause. Here, again, we have a

THE THILOSOPHY OF VOLITION. 265

smart quibble ; that is all. He forgets that the something for
which he asserts absolutely self-determined (or, if he prefers it
so, undetermined) action, is a specific faculty in the soul, which
his theory absolutely severs from all tie of efficient relation to
iiny other faculty. But the thing for which our theory claims
self-determination is not a severed faculty, but the soul itself,
ihe spiritual agent, qualified consistently by all its related facul-
ties of intellect and appetency and sensibility. TJiere is the
vital difference. Dr. Bledsoe's theory is guilty of asserting, in
this undetermined faculty, a function which would be e7is ex ni-
7uIo ,' and it is also guilty of derationalizing this function of
choice by thus severing it from all efficient relation with the
regulative faculties of the soul ; but, according to our view, it is
t/ie soul which has the function of originating modifications in
itself on occasion of suitable objectives. Therein is its spon-
taneity. The soul does originate new modifications of thought
and appetency. We need no regressus without end to account
for a given act of thought or appetency in the mind. But the
simple question is, how are the several faculties related to each
other in their efficient inter-action ? Which is directive, and
which executive ? Are the conjoined faculties of intelligence
and appetency directive of the will, the faculty of choice ? That
is what common sense and the Bible declare. Or is the faculty
of choice, the executive faculty, unrelated by any efficient tie to
any directive faculty? That is Dr. Bledsoe's theory; and we
r.ssert that it disjoints the soul, leaves man a blind agent, and
confounds the whole psychology on which rational agency and
responsibility rest. It is perfectly triie that we must assign to
the soul some function, somewhere, of self-caused action, else we
should be involved, for each mental state and act, in an endless
regressiis of mental causations, and real spontaneity would be
lost. But the point of the matter is this : that the naked func-
tion of volition, as among the related functions of the soul, is
the very one which cannot be, in Dr. Bledsoe's sense, self-caused.
It should not be concealed here that there is a sense in which
«very change in the world of mind is connected Avith a chain of
efficiencies which goes back to eternity, which is a literal regres-
^vs i)i infnitinn. We speak now of that providential control
over soiils, and their states and acts, which the Almightly se-

264 THE PHILOSOPHY OF VOLITION.

cretly exeiis, in the endless execution, in and tlirougli men, of
liis eternal decree. But botli consciousness and Scripture assure
us that the way in which this providence operates does not in-
fringe our true spontaneity ; and as the point now in debate is
not the theology, but the psychology, of human volitions, we
content ourselves with simply recording this truth.

We are now prepared to approach the remaining task which
v/e assigned oiu'selves, to examine Dr. I>ledsoe's peculiar phase
of the theory of free will, and ascertain whether it contains any-
thing entitled to modify our views. Many of his arguments have
been already considered and refuted in connection with our
affirmative establishment of the Calvinistic doctrine. Repetition
wiU be avoided as much as possible.

We have seen how our author, conscious of the utter oA'er-
thro'w Edwards has given to the proposition, that " the will
determines itself," endeavors to change the issue of the debate.
All the great men, like Dr. Reid, who ha^e made inconsistent
attempts to sustain his view of free will, he thinks, have con-
ceded too much. They have allowed it to be taken for granted
that volitions are determined somehow ; and, rejecting the doc-
trine that they are determined by subjective motives, have
attempted to show that they are determined by the will. But
on that position. Dr. Bledsoe confesses, Edwards has utterly
overthroAvn them. So he would take a higher position: iliat
volitions are not detennhied at all ,' that they are not effects o^f
any efficient cause. If he is met by the maxim, ex nihilo nihil,
his evasion is, to say that volitions arise from the mind, and the
mind is something. But he would concede to Edwards, against
his own friends, that it is not correct to say "the will is self-
determined" to choose ; or that the will "remains in e(iuilihrii>
in the act of choice ;" or that the mind is conscious at the moment
of choosing of a " power of contrary choice." He admits the
fatal logic of our champions against these positions. Now, upon
these admissions we remark first, is it not a little presumptuous
for this last champion thus to criticise the positions of all the
gi'eat men upon his own side ? Is he alone the consistent advo-
cate of their common theory of free will ? Common sense will
rather incline to the conclusion that these great and astute advo-
cates of the Arminian philosophy knew what they were about,

THE PHILOSOPHY OF VOLITION. 265

at least as well as Dr. Bledsoe. T7e siu'inise tliat they declined
to adojjt liis favorite position of an undetermined detertrmiaiion,
not from sliort-siglitedness, but because, like ns, tliey regarded
it as intrinsically absurd. We liold witli tliem, that if eitlier
their or Dr. Bledsoe's theory of free will were true, then it must
result that the will is in eqidlibrio as to motives. Very true, the will
cannot be undecided when it decides, but, on their common theory,
it remains in equiltbrio quoad the motives competing to influence
the choice. Whatever inconveniences Edwards' logic has at-
tached to this position Dr. Bledsoe will have to abide. So
" the power of contrary choice " must be claimed if his theory
be true ; for if the will, when choosing an affirmative choice, had
not the power to choose the contrary, it was efficiently deter-
mined from that contrary to the affirmative, — the very doctrine
Dr. Bledsoe abhors. These attempts to modify the old doctrine
of absolute free will are, therefore, but virtual confessions of its
overthrow.

But the kernel of Dr. Bledsoe's doctrine of the will is in his
notion of cause and effect. He asserts that the mind has no
notion of " effect," save as it is physical change produced in a
passive subject. He asserts that no true agent can be so the
subject of causation as that thereby its active function shall be
produced efficiently. He regards passivity as of the essence of
all true effects. Act and effect with him belong to irreconcilable
categories. He is even rash enough to say that " a change in
matter is the only idea we have of an effect ;" and on p. 81,
J^.i'o mi nation of Edwards, that "we have no experience of an
act of mind produced by a preceding act of mind." He is will-
ing to grant that the volition has conditions sine qua non, but
denies that it has any efficient cause.

Now, the intelligent reader will have noticed, that all this is
simply a petitio principii. Whether in the dependent being,
man, the action of the soul can be efficiently produced, and yet
be proper action, is the very question to be proved in this dis-
cussion, and not to be assumed, as Dr. Bledsoe does. To saj'
that an effect proper must be a change wrought on a passive sub-
ject, is simply begging the very question to be settled. That the
assumption is not true as to conscious volitions, we have proved —
not assumed — in our affirmative discussion. That it is not true

266 THE PHILOSOPHY OF VOLITION.

of otlier activities of tlie mind, as a general proposition, is easily
proved, both by Scripture and reason. When, for instance, the
apostle tells us of God's " icorhing hi us, both to will and to do, of
his good pleasure," have we not a truly caused action f Accord-
ing to Dr. Bledsoe, effect is limited to the realms of matter and
instinct ; there is no class of rational and spiritual effects that
are truly effects. Yet every man in the world — doubtless includ-
ing Dr. Bledsoe — aims to produce them ! For instance, all speak
of e^ddence as producing mental conviction. Oftentimes the
conviction of mind is an effect of evidence as inevitable and cer-
tain as any physical effect in the world. Now, we know that
Dr. Bledsoe will attempt to exclude this class of mental effects,
-so fatal to his position, by saying that the functions of the intelli-
gence are passive. But no psychologist will say so. Ko other
philosopher will rank the intellect among the "passive powers"
of the soul. He is refuted again by all the numberless instances
in which volition itself is directed, not upon the bodily mem-
bers, but upon our own mental faculties. Dr. Bledsoe says that
it is the very nature of volition, not to be a real effect, but to
produce real effects. "Well, let the latter part of his assertion be
true, and then, in every case in which volition is directed iipon
the action of our own mental faculties, he has refuteil himself.
There is the case, for instance, of voluntary attention, in which
the will directs the intellect, and energizes it to its highest and
most creative acts of cognition. But why multiply words ?
Does Dr. Bledsoe require us to think that the familiar phrase
" self-government " is a mere metaphor, save as it is applied to
the direction of our limbs and sense-organs ? If not, he must
admit that there are multitudes of cases in which acts of mind
are causes of other acts of mind.

So hard pressed does Dr. Bledsoe evidently feel himself by
the difficulties of his position, that he even resorts to a wretched
piece of genuine sensationalist analysis, worthy of James Mill
himself, to account for our very notion of cause and effect, p.
77 : "The only way in which tlie mind ever comes to be fur-
nished with the ideas of cause and effect at all is this : we are con-
scious that we will a certain motion hi the h>dy, and we discover
that the motion follows the volition," etc. Sarely it is not neces-
sary at this day to refute this anyalsis, and to prove that such

THE PHILOSOrHY OF VOLITION. 267

instances as these, of conscious, or observed, caiisations, are
merely the occasions and not the sources of our rational notions
of cause and effect. God and angels have no bodies, no limbs,
to be moved by volitions ; hence, according to this marvellous
explanation, they would not have any notion of causation at all !
Conscious instances of such bodily motions produced by voli-
tions are merely the occasions, and not the only ones, upon'
which the mind evolves its own a 2)^"'^ori notion of cause and
effect — the antecedent which contains efficiency to effectuate
the consequent — and forms the inevitable judgment, that with-
out such antecedent the consequent change would not have
heen.

In his third section our author endeavors to raise a difficulty
against the doctrine of the efficiency of motive as producing voli-
tion, by asserting that there is no way to measure " the stronger
motive." When Edwards teaches that the choice always is as
the stronger motive, the question is asked, "What is motive ?
Let the answer be, motive is the complex of all that in the mind
which immediately produces the volition. How, then, asks Dr.
Bledsoe, is it known which is " the stronger motive ?" Edwards
replies, as he supposes, by the fact that it is the one which the
volition follows. And then he charges that Edwards has pro-
ceeded in a circle, first assuming that the volition must follow
the stronger motive, and then, that the motive the volition actu-
ally followed was the stronger. Now, that this cavilling is falla-
<5ioas may be shown by a parallel fact. By precisely the same
process Dr. Bledsoe might show that the science of mechanics
is all fallacious. But he doulitless believes in the laws of me-
chanics. The motion of a body will be in the direction of the
stronger force, will it not ? Undoubtedly. But how is the rela-
tive strength of forces measured ? By the motion they produce.
The stronger force will overcome the greater resistance, "uill it
not ? Yes. But how is the relative strength of the force esti-
mated? By the amount of resistance it overcomes. Have we
n<^t here, then, the very same "circular" process? Undoubt-
edly. Yet Dr. Bledsoe believes firmly in the validity of these
mechanical laws, in spite of our cavil! Then his parallel cavil
is worthless as against Edwards. The truth is, that on Dr. Bled-
soe's empirical philosophy the cavil* would be insoluble for him

263 THE THILOSOPHY OF VOLITION.

in either case, tlioiir^k worthless in both cases. The sohition is,
ihat oiir necessary ccnviction of the great hnv of causation is not
Jerived from experience, as he supposes, but is an a i^r'torl
result of the law of the reason ; and it is law which alone enables-
us to formulate our experience rationally. It is not experience
which has gradually taught us that every motion in bodies is an
effect of related force, and that every deliberate, responsible vo-
lition is the effect of subjective motive. It is intuition which
prepares our minds thus to construe the sequences of change
given us by observation. And by the same law of the intuitive
judgment, which demands a cause for every change, we know
that cause must be adequate to and so related in its degree of
energy to its effect.

It is very true that, in the case of a given motive in our fellow-
creature's mind, we can only determine its relative strength
a 2)oster'iori by its effect in producing volition. But do we ever
suppose that the motive derives its strength from this circum-
stance ? Ko ; our reason forbids it.

There is one general but conclusive reply to all of Dr. Bled-
soe's argumentation against the efficient certainty of motive. He
has ?di Itself made admissions — un^\•ilhngly and under the uncon-
scious stress of common sense — ichich retract and destroy his
icJiole theory. Thus, p. 93 : " A desire or affection is the indis-
jyensahle condition, the incariahle antecedent, of an act of the will."
P. 216 ; " Has volition an efficient cause ? I answer, No. Has
it ' a sufficient ground and reason ' of its existence ? I answer,
Yes. No one ever imagined that there are no indispensable
antecedents to choice, -^-ithout which it could not take place.'*
.... "But a power to act, it will be said, is not a sufficient rea-
son to account for the existence of an action." He means of
this or that specific action. "This is true; the reason is to
come. The sufficient reason, however, is not an efficient cause ;
for there is some difference between a blind impulse or force and
rationality " (pp. 92, 93j. " Our volitions might depend on cer-
tain desires or affections, but they would not result from the in-
fluence or action of them The reason why this pi-inciple

has not been employed by the advocates of free agency is, I
humblv conceive, because it has not been entertained by them."
Jouffroy, as admitted on p.- 92, did not " entertain' it. P. 40,

THE THILOSOrHY OF VOLITION. 269

*' TJie strength of a motive" as President Edwards properly re-
marks, " DEPENDS UPON THE STATE OF THE MIND to V'Jiich it IS ad-
dressed." Thus does Dr. Bledsoe stumble uuintentionaUy, but
iiuavoidablv, into the Calvinistic doctrine of volition. By "mo-
tive " he here means objective inducement, as is perfectly ob-
vious from his describing it as a something " addressed, to the
mind " ; so that he has acceded to our position, which is the
comer-stone of our whole philosophy of the will, viz., that the
strength of objective inducement " depends on the state of the
mind." Now, then, first, will not that state of the mind be regu-
lative of the volitions of which these objective inducements are
the occasions, not causes ? The affirmative is too plain. And
Second, what is included in that "state of the Diind" or, as Dr.
Bledsoe expresses it elsewhere, "jiature" of the mind, which is
thus found to be efficiently regulative of volitions ? This is the
crucial question, from the investigation of which he always re-
coils, by reason of that obstinate confusion of sensibility and
conation, of the objective and subjective, with which we charged
him in the outset. Had he dared to look this question steadily
in the face, he would have seen what all common sense recog-
nizes— just what the Calvinistic philosophy formulates. This
" state," this determinant " nature," is precisely the hah'Uus, the
disposition, regulative of the rise of subjective appetencies, and
thus of the volitions which these cause. In this fatal admission
Dr. Bledsoe has refuted his wdiole refutation. Again, Dr. Bled-
soe finds that none of his colleagues, in the advocacy of self-
determination of the will, concur with him, not even Jouflfroy, in
his idea that while volitions " depend on certain desires or affec-
tions," yet they do not " result from their influence or action."
Ko wonder ; for they have not Dr. Bledsoe's capacity for self-
contradiction. To him alone must belong the unique glory of
believing that an event is " not influenced by" what it " depends
on ! " Again, he teaches that not only a mind, but an oliject
and a desire, are the invariable, the indispensable antecedents of
voUtion. Well, sound philosophy teaches that a change has no
invariable and indispensable antecedent except its efficient
cause. Why should a given antecedent be indispensable to a
giA'en consequent, except that it is its cause ? It is by this very
principle that all the methods of experimental induction into the

270 THE PHILOSOPHY OF YOLITIOX.

laws of cause in nature proceed. The pliilosoplier knows that
when he has found the invariable indispensable antecedent, he
has the cmise. Hence this is what all his canons of induction are
framed to seek for.

Once more : Dr. Bledsoe admits that, while he thinks volition
has no efficient cause, yet it has, of course, "its sufficient ground
and reason." He exclaims, " There is some diflference between
blind impulse or force and rationality ! " In that we all agree.
But is force the only species of cause, and physical motion in
the passive body the only species of effect ? That is what Dr.
Bledsoe assumes without proving. What we proved by Scrip-
ture, experience and reason was, that there are spiritual causa-
tions as well as physical. And we presume, again, that Dr.
Bledsoe has the unique honor of being the only philosopher who
is not a materialist who ever denied it. Now, then, in this
sphere of spiritual causations, our plain theory is, that as the
effects are rational, the causes also are rational. Now, what is a
rational cause save "a sufficient gi'ound and reason?" The
Greek, the native language of philosophy, suggests this obvious
truth by using the same word for both. Ahia is cause; and
alzia is reason of acting ; rational, subjective motive.

With this complete answer which Dr. Bledsoe has given of
himself we conclude our answer. And thanking him for his
efficient aid in his own demolition, we make our final bow, re-
ciprocating his courteous wishes for our welfare.

THE EMOTIONS/

THE works on mental science most current treat almost ex-
clusively of the intelligence or cognitive faculties of the
soul. Locke's great treatise dispatches the subject in his chap-
ter on Poioer, and that in the most superficial and unsatisfactory
manner. Sir William Hamilton and Dr. Noah Porter close
their books without teaching us anything at all about the feel-
ings of the soul, except the mere intimation given in their j)re-
liminary divisions of the subject, that human souls have such
functions. Kant, in his Critic of the Practical -Reason, speaks
of the motives of human activity, thus recognizing the emotive
functions of the soul, and making some profound remarks. But
the main object of the treatise being to discuss the ethical judg-
ment and sentiment, as the peculiar characteristic of rational,
responsible agents, it really presents no systematic discussion of
the feelings as a whole. To us the most striking trait of this
work of the great philosopher is the following : he alone, of all
the psychologists, recognizes and establishes " the propensity to
evil " in human nature on pure grounds of psychology as distin-
guished from theology, as one of the constitutive traits of hu-
man character, just as other psychologists recognize and prove
the natural love of happiness, of power, or of applause. Of
this, more in the end. Dr. Thomas Brown devotes an adequate
portion of his eloquent lectures to the feelings, for which, as
for the elevation and purity of his views, and the ingeuuity of
his analyses, he deserves much admiration. But his distribu-
tion of the subject is not logical, and he leaves much to be done
for the perfecting of this branch of the science.

Dr. McCosh seems to have been moved by this belief to the
undertaking of this, his latest work. Dr. Brown had distributed
the feelings into three classes: 1, Our "immediate emotions;"

' This article appeared in the Southern Presbyterian Review for July, 188-4,
reviewing The Emotions, by James McCosh, D. D., LL. D. New York :
Charles Scribner's Sons, 12rQ0. , pp. 256.

271

272 THE EMOTIONS.

sucli as wonder, beanty, the ludicrous, love, liate, jDride, liumil-
itv, sympatliy. 2, Our " retrosiiectivc emotions;" as regret,
anger, gratitude, gladness, remorse. 3, Our " prospective emo-
tions ; " as desires, fear, and Lope. Tlie basis of this classifica-
tion is the way in which feelings are related to their objects in
time. The first class he then subdivides into feelings involving
moral quality, as love, hate, sympathy ; and those involving no
moral quality, as wonder, beauty, the ludicrous. Dr. McCosh
lias evidently had this distribution in his eye, and in attempting
to improve it, he only changes it into one still more inconse-
quential. His plan is to distribute the feelings into : I. " Affec-
tions towards animate objects," the subdivisions of which are
{a) retrospective, (Jj) immediate, and (c) prospective affections
towards animate objects. II. "Affections towards inanimate
objects," the a?sthetic namely. III. " Continuing and complex
affections." This hst suggests easily many fatal objections.
The divisions do not divide. Are not aU feelings, in theii- very-
nature, more or less " continuing " ? The same affection is in
some spirits more persistent than in some other more fickle
ones. Xo affection is, hke volitions and like many sense per-
ceptions, momentary. Again, love is classed in the third divi-
sion, for instance; but love is as simple as any of the affec-
tions, and certainly it is one which can only be directed towards
an animate object. Again, have we no aesthetic feelings towards
animate objects ? Do we never see beauty in a squirrel, a fine
horse, a graceful child? Must the object necessarily be dead,
like a star or a mountain, in order to awaken the [esthetic senti-
ment ? And if the division into prospective, immecTiate, and
retrospective is worth anything, does it not also extend to the
second and third classes ? Once more, the complex affections we
must unquestionably find very numerous, even as various com-
binations of a few letters make a multitude of different syllables.
The hst should be very long, whereas Dr. McCosh's is very short,
and must, therefore, omit a very large number of complex feel-
ings. And sui'ely, in a philosophic classification, the complex
ejnotions should be treated under the heads of the simple and
elemental ones which form them l\v combination. Wh'at chemist
would treat, in one book, sulphur as a simple substance, and
then in another the sulphates and sulphides ?

THE EMOTIONS. 273

Or, if wo return to Dr. Brown's less objectionable distribution,
"v\'e may well inquire wlietber the relations of feelings to their
objects in time gives us any accurate or useful ground of divi-
sion. In one sense all our feelings have a ])osterior relation, in
time, to the cognition of their objects; for such cognition is the
condition precedent of the rise of the emotion. For instance,
■when Dr. Brown makes wonder an immediate emotion, and an-
ger a retrospective one, we must ask: Did not the cognition
•which excited the wonder precede that feeling just as truly as
the cognition of the injury preceded the resulting emotion of
anger? We may admit that desire, hope, fear, do look forward
to future good or evil in the sense in which wonder and resent-
ment do not.

But if we grant that the relation in time of the feelings to their
objects gives a thorough ground of division, the equally grave ob-
jection is, that this division would be fruitless. The discrimina-
tive trait selected is one which has little importance, and leads to
no scientific results. It is as though one should classify fruits
by their color, when one class would be of " red fruits," includ-
ing strawberries, some cherries, currants, grapes, and apples
(and excluding others of the same species), with pomegranates.
"What light would botany ever receive from such a classification
and treatment ?

So it Avas erroneous for Dr. Brown to divide feeUngs into those
qualified by moral trait and those having no moral trait. Strictly,
no feelings are ethical in quality except the emotions of con-
science, approbation, and reprehension. But in the popular
sense, any feeling may become moral, or immoral, according as
it is conditioned and limited. The aesthetic feelings, the bodily
appetites, the resentments, the desires, the loves and hatreds,
may be "sdrtuous, or vicious, or indifferent, according to their
objects and limitations. If there are some objects of feeling
such that the emotions cannot be directed to them without hav-
ing some ethical quality, good or bad — ^which is admitted — this
is far short of giving us a ground of general discrimination. A
profitable classification must be obtained in far other ways than
these.

Before dealing with this task, let us resume the question as to
the importance of this discussion of the feelings in philosophy.

Vol. m.— 18.

274 THE EMOTIONS.

Our rational consciousness reveals to us a multitude of acts of
intelligence, sensitive, intuitive, suggestive, or illative, which all
have this in common, that their results are cognitions. The same
consciousness reveals to the slightest glance that there is a class
of functions in the human spirit very distinct from cognitions :
the feelings. The best description of these, and of their wide
difference from cognitions, is that which we read in conscious-
ness itself. Our admiration, disgust, desire, necessarily wait on
our ideas of their objects; and yet differ as consciously from
the acts of intellection which arouse them as the warmth of the
solar ray, felt in our nerves of touch, differs from its luminous
power, felt by the optic nerves. Feeling is the temperature of
thought.

Although so many of the books direct our attention exclusively
to the powers of intellect, the feelings are far from being the
least important or least noble functions of the soul. These writers
seem to think that the whole glory of the mind is in its discrimi-
nations of thought ; that here alone they can display a glittering
acumen. But this quality is no less necessary to the correct
analysis of the feelings than of the logical processes of mind. If
any eminency is to be assumed for either department, we shoidd
incline to claim it for the feelings, as the more noble and essen-
tial functions of the soul, rather than the cognitions. For,

First, The conative feelings constitute the energetic and oper-
ative part of every motive to action. Hence these are, in scien-
tific view, more important than the cognitions which occasion,
them. Essentially, feehngs are man's motive power. Intellect
is the cold and latent magnetism which directs the ship's com-
pass, and furnishes the guide of its motion, should it be able to
move. Feeling is that elastic energy which throbs within the
machinery, and gives propulsion to its wheels. Without it, the
ship, in spite of the needle pointing with its subtile inteUigence
to the pole, rots in the calm before it makes a voyage any-
whither.

Second, The morality of our volitions depends upon that of
their subjective motives ; and these derive their moral complexion
wholly from the feelings which combine in them ; for this is the
active, and therefore the ethical, element. It is chiefly the feel-
icgs which qualify the motives, as praise- or blame-worthy.

THE EMOTIONS. 275

Hence, again : a great and noble emotion is a higlier function
of the soul than any mere vigor of cognition. "The sei-pent
was more subtile than any beast of the field ; " and none the less
the reptile, the most ignoble of his class of animals. "Magna-
nimity" is made up chiefly of the grand affections, and not of
keen thoughts. Disinterested love is nobler than talent. Gen-
erous seK-sacrifice is grander than acute invention ; the heroic
vrill is more admirable than the shrewd intellect. Hence, again :
our moral discrimination, our analyses of our own motives, is
chiefly concerned with the ascertainment of the real elements of
feeling which combine in them. We shall strikingly confirm
this by the instances to be cited hereafter, in which we shall find
the moral problem : Was the act right ? or, in other words. Was
the emotional part of the motive right? will turn solely upon the
analysis of the feehng which entered into the motive. Indeed,
the intelligent moral government of the heart will be found to
turn on such analysis of the feelings, tracing them to their real
ultimate principles. The maxim, " Know thyself," resolves chiefly
into a knowledge of the feelings which mingle within us. It is,
then, chiefly the psychology of the feelings which is the moral
guide of life.

Third, The vigor of the functions of cognition itself depends,
in every man, more on the force of the incentive energizing the
facult}'-, than on the native strength or clearness of the intellect.
Many a man w'hose mental vision w^as by nature Kke that of the
eagle, has been practically of inert and useless mind ; the lumin-
ous ray of his spii'it was dimmed, and at last quenched, by the
fogs of indolence or fickleness. There was not loill enough to
direct the mental attention steadily to any valuable problem.
But in the man of persistent and powerful feeling, the desire has
so cleared and stimulated the vision that it has grown in clear-
ness until it has pierced the third heavens of truth. It is chiefly
the feelings which make the man.

If we examine a lexicon, we find names of feelings in almost
countless numbers. In a single subdivision we see " pleasure,"
"joy," "gladness," "content," "delight," "rapture," "cheerful-
ness," " a merry heart," and many others. In another we hear
of " expectation," " Avish," " hope," " desu'e," " craving," " lust,"
" concupiscence," " coveting," " longing." In another of " un-

276 THE EMOTIONS.

easiness," " appreliension," "alarm," "fear," "panic," "terror."
But tlie faculties of cognition seem to be few, and easily separ-
ated. Hence, perhaps, some infer tliat tliere can be no complete
psychologT of the feehngs ; that this department of the soul's
functions must remain an ever-shifting cloud-world, whose
laws are too numerous and too fickle to be comprehended. But
it is hoped that this mutable maze will be found like the kaleid-
oscope, all of whose diversified wonders are accounted for bv two
plane miri'ors and a few colored beads. True science can bring
order out of this confusion. And the most valuable ethical and
theological results wiU be, that right emotions will be distin-
guished from the wrong, and we shall asceiiain the line which
separates the normal afiections from the unlawful.

One simpHfication of the subject is at once effected by noticing
that they may be the same in natui'e and differ in degree. So
that many of the names of emotions do but express the same
feeling in different gi'ades of energy. Thus: "concern," "ap-
prehension," " fear," " terror," are but four degrees of the same
feeling, as calmer or more intense. T\ hat else is expressed by
the terms "content," "cheerfulness," "joy," "rapture," "■ trans-
port " ? The word " passion " is often used colloquially, and
even defined in some books as meaning the emotion in an in-
tense degree. Thev tell us, for instance, that "love" has become
" a passion," when it has risen to an uncontrollable agitation,
absorbing the whole soul, overpowering the self-control, making
the pulse to bound and the face to glow. Thus they would call
"displeasure" a feehng, but rage a " passion." And they have
even separated off chapters upon the discussion of " the passions."
But if the intense feeUngs are the same, except in degi'ee, with
theii- calmer movements, this is just as sensible as though the
chemist who promised to treat scientifically of " water," should
discuss separately water in a teacup and a tub ; or, after an-
nouncing "caloric" as his subject, should devote one chapter to
heat in a tea-kettle, and a different one to heat in the boiler of a
steam-engine. This abuse of the word "passion" has another
mischief : it utterly obscures the etymology of the word, and in
doing so helps to becloud another division of the feelings, which
is, as we shall see, the most fundamental of all. Passio is from
patior, " I suffer," " I endure." Passions should mean those

THE EMOTIONS. 277

feelings witli which I am passively impressed. The English
Liturgy uses the word classically and. correctly when it teaches
the worshipper to supplicate Christ "by his most holy cross and
passion" (by his sufferings ; the feelings of pain, bodily and
spiritual, which he was made passively to endure) ; and our Con-
fession uses it aright when it declares God '• without parts and
passions : " an Infinite Monad, essentially and boundlessly active,
but incapable of being made to suifer or to experience any func-
tion of passivity.

This plain and obvious view of feelings, the same in element
but different in degree, explains another very frequent fallacy.
The feelings, in their calmer grades, are mistaken for the rational
functions of judgment, which they attend , Thus, the man
whose motive is caution, or apprehension, is described as acting
rationally ; while he who is actuated by teiTor is said to act with
"blind passion." But what is "terror" except a higher degree
of the very same element of feeling, " fear," which appears in
" apprehension "? In the true sense of the word "passion," an
emotional function of passivity, if terror is a " passion," so is
"apprehension." Extensive delusion also exists in the idea
which finds expression in the first word of the popular phrase,
"hlind passion." It is supposed that vehement emotion usually
obfuscates the intellect. So it sometimes does, doubtless. And
perhaps far more often it clarifies the intellect. Every faculty
performs its functions more accurately when it is vigorously ener-
gized. Feeling is the temperature of thought. Is the solar beam
in July less luminous than on some pale wintry day, because
charged with so much more heat ? Facts confirm this the true
philosophy. Lawyers assure us that they get their most perspi-
cacious views of the merits of their cases from the minds of
their clients who are "piping hot" ^dth indignation and zeal.
The great orator, when in the very " torrent and tempest of his
passion," enjoys flashes of intellectual vision so clear and pene-
trating, that he sees by them in a moment logical relations which
a day's calm study might not have revealed to him. Stonewall
Jackson modestly stated, that the moments when he had been
conscious of the best use of his intellect were in the crisis of a
great battle, with the shells hurtling over him. To our appre-
hension it appears fully as probable that the dull and dim grade

278 THE EMOTIONS.

of an emotion will mislead the reason, as the vehement grade ;
especially in view of the fallacy which calls the calmer grade a
rational judgment. The gentle wolf in sheep's clothing will be
more likely to invade the peaceful sheepfold of the intellect suc-
cessfully than the raging wolf in the confessed wolf's skin.

These fallacies also greatly obscure our apprehensions of the
functions and value of the feelings in the conduct of the spirit.
^\"e must learn to separate from our conception of the essence of
the feelings that supposed trait of pungency or agitation. This
necessarily characterizes only the more intense degrees of the
feelings. The mental state may be true feeling, and yet calm
and even. Again, we define feeling as "the temperature of
thought." Now, the temperature of a beam of hght may vary
in intensity, from the faint warmth of the wintry sunHght to the
burning: heat of the midsummer beam condensed bv a lens.
Yet in both rays it is caloric, not mere light. Heat is usually
thought of by the unlearned as imbuing only fiery or molten
masses. Yet science teaches us that there is a smaller degree of
caloric even in a block of ice, for it can so radiate from that ice
as to affect a thermometer. These facts are onh' used to illus-
trate the proposition so often overlooked, that there may be an
element of feeling in even the calmest processes of soul, and the
analogy of the cases of itself raises a probability of the truth.
But it can be demonstrated, and that by the following plain and
short view. There can be no subjective motive without some
feeling. But, without subjective motive, there can be no action
of vohtion. Every rational volition is from a subjective motive
to an object, which is the inducement, or objective end of the
action. But in order for any object to be an inducement to ra-
tional volition, it must present itself to the mind in the double
aspect of the desirable and the real. For instance, if one says :
" Come with us to the hill and dig laboriously, and you shall
bear home on your shoulders a heavy load of rubbish," no one
responds. The object is real, but totally undesii'able. Again
one says : " Bun, and overtake the foot of yonder moving rain-
bow arch, and under it you shall find a bag of gold." Not a
soul moves a step. Why not? The object named, gold, is de-
sirable, but the understanding knows it is unreal. Again, one
says : '' Come with us to the mountains of Georgia, and in the

THE EMOTIONS. 279

known auriferons veins of that region we -will dig gold." The
man desirous of wealth will now move. The objective, or pro-
posed inducement, stands to the mind in the double category of
the desirable and the real. But of course if this object becomes
inducement to the soul, there must be an answering correspond-
ency between it and the soul ; the subjective actions of the soul
going out towards it must also be double, including both a judg-
ment and a desire. Thus psychology confirms the verdict of
common sense and consciousness. Every motive to action must
involve a desire. But desire is feehng. Hence in the states of
soul leading to the calmest intelligent action, there must be
some feeling.

We learn thus, it is a mistake to suppose that feeling is inter-
mittent in the soul's functions, while cognition is supposed to be
constant. It is as true that the waking soul is never without
feelings (in at least some calmer manifestations) as that it is
never without thoughts. One phase of feeling goes, but another
takes its place in perpetual succession ; it is only the intensity of
feeling that ebbs and flows. Indeed, were all feehng really to
desert a human soul, that soul would be as truly frozen for the
time into fatuity as though it were struck idiotic. Suppose a
man walking along the street under the impulse of ^ome purpose,
wholly deserted by feeling — he would not take another step!
Por thought is not purpose, unless it also involves desire. With
the total extinction of desire, purpose would be annihilated, and
the purposeless soul would pause as certainly as though it had
become fatuous. Let the eager racer, who is about to bound
towards the goal, see that the gold crown upon the goal, which
-was his incentive, has turned to a clod. He stops. Why should
he run ? No feeling, no action. If a man totally lost all feel-
ing, what would there be left to energize his attention so as to
direct it voluntarily to any given subject of thought ? Nothing.
The processes of thought would remain as aimless and vacil-
lating as the movements of the magnetic needle whose polarity
is interrupted. Conscious thought might die away out of the
soul after the death of feeling. Certainly there would be an end
of all connected thought ; for the act by which the soul directs
its attention is a volition, and without feeling there is no volition.

The next step towards simplifying the multifarious forms of

280 THE EMOTIONS.

feeling slionlcl be to search for those elements which are simple,
original, and characteristic of human nature as such. This
search must result in a correct classification ; and only by such
a result can its completeness be verified. And,

I. At the forefront of all proper classification of feelings must
stand ever the distinction between those which have an external
cause, and in which the soul is passive — acted on, instead of
acting — and those which have a subjective source in the soul's
own spontaneity and dispositions, and which act outwardly to-
wards their objects. Had not the popular usage so totally
spoiled and perverted the classical meaning of the word j?as-
sions, this would give us exactly the term we need for the former
class. The word would express states of feeling in which the
sovil is subject, and not agent, where the capacity for the feehng
is a "passive power," or mere susceptibility lodged in the native
constitution, and not a subjective activity. But as the persist-
ency of the erroneous usage would cause us continually to be
misunderstood, we surrender the word. Let us agree to call
these ieelmgs functions of sensibility, or sensibilities.

The opposite class of feehngs, where the power in exercise is
a subjective and active power, and the function of emotion has
a subjective cause, we will call cqjpetencies. But we must remind
the reader that these inward activities may pronounce them-
selves for or against an object. They may take the form of de-
sires or aversions ; they may reach after or repel the objectives.
And the one class of feelings will be converse to the other. "We
desire, then, when we speak of " appetencies," to be understood,
as meaning either desires or aversions, either of these outgoings
of subjective spontaneity.

It will soon be made to appear how all-important this division
is. Yet many neglect it. Dr. Porter, dividing the powers of
the soul, mentions them as three powers, of "Intellect, of Sensi-
bility, of Will." So Gregory and many other morahsts. Locke,
in the brief discussion of the feelings referred to, insists, indeed,
upon distinguishing between the desires and the will, but declares
that aU desire is determined by an " uneasiness," which he evi-
dently regards as a passive sensibihty. Kant, however, with his
usual accuracy, divides feeling from desire. Sir Wm. Hamilton,
in his Lectures on Metaphysics, announces and defends the cor-

THE EMOTIONS. 281

rect distinction, making four classes of powers in the soul : 1,
Of intellect or cognition ; 2, Of sensibility ; 3, Of " conation,"
including («) appetencies, and (li) volition. He claims, with a
rather hasty self-importance, that he was the first to see and an-
nounce the true distinction. Had he been as familiar with the
Calviuistic divinity (even of his own country) as with the heathen
Peripatetics, he would have seen that many of them had virtually
taught the correct division generations before him. For in their
habitual distribution into " iLnderstanding , affections, and vnll,"
they include, virtually, under the term will, not only the function
of naked voHtion, but also all those of subjective conation.
When, for instance, the Calvinist speaks of the " coiTuption of
the v'iU" he means rather the conative movements preceding
volition, than the mere power of volition itself. This distribu-
tion really meant to say, then, that the soul has three classes of
powers: 1, The intellective; 2, The susceptibilities (passive
powers) ; 3, The conative, or active, divided into («) the appeten-
cies, and ijj) volitions. So that they really set forth the all-im-
portant distinction between the sensibilities and the appetencies.

It is true that the two opposite forms of feeling often, nay,
usually, concur ; both are usually present together. It is also
true that the impressions on the sensibility are the occasions
(not causes) of the rise of appetencies, or subjective desires and
aversions. But none the less is the distinction just and funda-
mental. For —

First, Consciousness requires it. In the rise and continuance
of a sensibility, I am conscious that, so far, I am only subject,
and not agent ; passive, and only impressed from ^^^thout. I
call into exercise no more spontaneity or selfhood as to experi-
encing or not experiencing the sensibility, than the man unwit-
tingly assaulted from the rear with a bludgeon has, as to the
pain resulting from its stroke. And, consequently, I feel no
more responsible. But when I begin to harbor an appetency,
though it be not yet matured into volition, I am conscious of
self-action. I know that this action of soul is an expression of
my own spontaneity. This appetency is the Ego tending out-
wardly to its objective. Its presence is as truly an expression of
my free preference as is a volition. I feel thus only because /
incline, or have the disposition, to feel thus; whereas before,

282 THE EMOTIONS.

mj sensibility was uttered in the passive verb, my appetency is
uttered in the active transitive verb. Let the reader consider
any actual instance. Suppose it to be that of the man causelessly
assaulted with the bludgeon. The first consequence of the blow
which is reported in the man's spirit is the gi'ief or distress an-
swering immediately to the physical affection of the bruised
nerves. In this the soul is as involuntary and passive as a stone
in falling. Next thereafter may arise in the spirit of the injured
man the warm appetency or desire to retaliate the pain — active
resentment. Or this may not arise. If the sufferer is choleric,
it may arise ; if he is meek, or if the blow came fi'om one he
loves, it may not arise, but in its place will come a tender grief
and a generous desire to render good for the smiter's evil. If the
desire to strike back arises, its occasion will be found in the pas-
sive sensibihty of grief or distress inflicted on the spirit by the
blow ; but the cause of the resentful appetency, or of the tender
forgiveness, must be sought in the subjective feeHngs of the man
struck. Let another instance be found in the complex feeling
called the " appetite " of hunger. This includes, first, an invol-
ujitary sensibility, the uneasiness of want ; and next, a voluntary
desire reaching forth to the food set before the eyes. But let .us
suppose that, at this moment, one informs him, " This food con-
tains arsenic." The appetency instantly subsides, although the
uneasiness of want continues. A third instance may be found in
the feeling of wonder. This, in its first movement, is a passive
sensibility, excited by a novel object. It is, however, the imme-
diate occasion of the active appetency of " curiosity," or the de-
sire to know.

Second, This distinction is essential to explaining our con-
scious free agency, consistently with the certainty of volitions.
The true doctrine here is undoubtedly the Augustinian : that
motives regularly cause volitions. But now, if we confound pas-
sive sensibilities with spontaneous appetencies, and call the
former " motives," that doctrine becomes inconsistent Avith our
conscious free agency. If my impulse to strike back at my as-
sailant is a passive sensibility, it is caused by his bloAv, as truly
as the bodily pain. In the producing of that pain I had no more
agency than the stone has in dropping when its support is re-
moved. If that imj)ulse was cause of the volition to strike back,

THE EMOTIONS. 283

then the whole series, feelings and act, was determined for me by
a causal necessity, without my consent, by the assailant when he
struck me. I was no free agent, but a sentient puppet. The
last movement, the act of retaliation, was determined by the
other's blow, as really as the movement of the hindmost link in
a chain, whose foremost link is drawn forward by another hand.
But if we make the proper distinction between sensibility and
appetency, if we perceive aright the objective source of the one,
and the subjective source and true spontaneity of the other, we
are able to refute that fatal inference. It is this truth which dis-
solves the whole fallacies, both of the materialistic fatahst and
the advocate of the contingency of the will. Grant, with Hob-
bes, Condillac, and the Mills, that appetency is but " transformed
sensation," or transformed sensibility, and every act of man is
physically necessitated, like the movements of the successive
Jinks of the chain. But the Pelagian, seeing whither this fatal
argument leads, sought to break it by den;ydng that motives do
cause voHtions. He exclaimed : The feelings do not causatively
determine the will, but the will is self-determined, and essenti-
ally in equilibrio, and always competent to emit the volition which
is contrary to the strongest motives. Only thus can you save
man's true free agency. But the Pelagian is here contradicted
by consciousness, by theology, by the absolute divine prescience
of volitions, by experience, and by a thousand absurd conse-
quences of his denial. Motives do determine volitions. But what
are motives f This vital question cannot be answered without
the just distinction between sensibiHties and appetencies. Pas-
sive sensibilities never are motives — at least to responsible
rational volitions — but only non-efficient occasions of those sub-
jective appetencies which are the determining motives. And
man is free in his volitions, because he is spontaneous in those
motives which determine them ; not because there is any such
monstrosity in his spiritual action as this function conformed to
no law, even of his own subjective reason or disposition, and
regulated by no rule, even of his own subjective constitution.
Thus the errors of the two extremes are resolved at once, and
the consistenc}^ of the true moderate doctrine reconciled with
our conscious free agency.

II. The next fundamental point is, to ascertain the con-

284 THE EMOTIONS.

ditions under wliich feelings arise in tlie soul. One condition is
obviously the presence, in thought at least, of some idea or judg-
ment as object of the feeling. He who feels must have some-
thing to feel about. It is equally obvious that it is mine cofjni-
tion, some idea or conclusion, presented either by sense, mem-
ory, association, imagination, or reason, which furnishes that
object before the soul. It is an injury which excites resentment ;
in order that it may do so, the injury must be either seen, felt,
or thought. The object of parental love is the child. This
affection can only imbue the mother's spirit conscioiisly as the
child is present, either before her eyes or her thought. Hence
the maxim, that the soul only feels as the mind sees. Cognition
is in order to feeling.

The other condition is, if possible, more important, though
not so obvious. In order to feeling, there must be in the soul
a given a jyiorl disposition or habitus as to the object. And
this is true both of the sensibilities and the appetencies. As the
rise of bodily pain from a blow or stab is conditioned on the
previous presence in the flesh of living nerve-tissue, so the pre-
vious presence in the soul of a given susceptibility is the condi-
tion prerequisite to the excitement of a given sensibility by its
object. The blow did not put the nerve-fibres into the flesh ; it
found them there. So the presence of the object in thought
does not create the susceptibility or sentiency of soul, but finds
it there. The parallel fact is true of the appetencies. Unless
the soul is naturally and previously qualified by a given disposi-
tion, or tendency of inclination for or against the given object,
seen in cognition, this could not be the object of appetency or
aversion. The racer would not, and could not, emit desire for
the clod set upon the goal; he could and would for the gold
crown. Now, did the clod and the metal, or either of them^
propagate this difference in the man's desire ? That is absurd ;
they are dead, inert matter ; objects of desire or aversion, not
agents. It was the native, subjective disposition of the racers
soul which determined the desire towards the golden crown, and
away from the clod, when the two objects were presented in cog-
nition. This is plain.

But from this it follows, that if a given disposition is native to
the soul, no object naturally indifferent or alien to that disposi-

THE EMOTIONS. 285

tion can have any agency wliatever to reverse it. This must fol-
low by the same kind of reasoning which proves that, if the horse
pulls the cart, it cannot be the cart which pulls the horse. What
is it that has decided whether a given object shall or shall not be
an inducement to this soul ? It is that soul's disposition which
has decided it, and decided it a priori. Then, an object which the
soul's disposition has already decided to be alien or indifferent
cannot influence that disposition backwards. The effect cannot
reverse its own cause. If, then, we have ascertained a native dis-
j)osition of souls, we have gotten an ultimate fact, behind which
analysis can go no further ; a fact which is regulative (not com-
pulsory) of human spontaneity, and through the spontaneous
appetencies, of the will. Let an instance be taken from the
class of feelings called appetites. "VVe ask the child: Is this
drug sweet or nauseous ? If on experiment the native taste
pronounce it nauseous, that is the end of the matter. Of course,
the child may still be forced by manual violence to swallow it.
The child may even elect freely to swallow it ; may even beg
eagerly to be allowed to swallow it, if it sees that the evil drug
is the only choice except a more evil sickness or death. But
that child will not freely eat that drug for the sake of enjoying it,
nor will its natural repugnance be in the least changed, but
rather confirmed, by having the drug forced upon it. Let an
instance also be taken from the spiritual dispositions. Is the
human soul so constituted as to find an intuitive pleasure in the
ap23lause of its fellows, and pain in their contempt ? If experi-
ment uniformly reveals this, what would or could be the result of
this appeal : " Come, my friend, and embark 3'ourself in this
laborious train of efforts. They cannot possibly procure for
you any good or advantage, except that of being despised by all
your fellow-men. Come, undergo these toils, solely to win that
contempt." Every one knows that the appeal must totally fail,
unless the man were a lunatic; and all except lunatics would
think us lunatics for attempting to make it. Now, the hearer is,
in this refusal, perfectly free, and yet his free refusal is abso-
lutely certain. Why ? The a jyriori constitutive law of dispo-
sition has settled the matter : that being well abused cannot be,
'per se, an inducement to a human soul ; the native disposition is
to find pleasure in the opposite — in ap]3lause.

286 THE EMOTIONS.

m. From this simple view it results that the feelings, both
sensibiUties and appetencies, will present themselves in pairs.
We shall meet with a given feeling and its reverse. The second
essential condition of feelings, as we saw, was the previous ex-
istence of a native disposition. Now, the disposition whicL
has decided a given object to be an inducement, will of course
regard the opposite object as one of repulsion. The taste which
has elected the sweet will, i2)so facto, repel the nauseous as evil.
Or, the disposition which recognizes the approbation of fellows
as the good, will ipso facto reject the obloquy of mankind && per
se an e^dl, however one may endorse it for the sake of some
other higher good. The pair of results in each case does not
disclose two dispositions, but only one, acting according to its
own nature oppositely towards the two opposite objects. In the
compass it is the same molecular energy which causes the upper
end of the needle to turn towards the north pole, and to turn
away from the south. It is so of the soul's native condition of
spiritual electricity; the one disposition discloses two opposite
actions, either of sensibiHty or of appetency ; the soul is affected,
in virtue of one disposition, with two sensibilities, or two appeten-
cies, pleasure or pain, desire or aversion, towards the pair of oppo-
site objects. Eminently is this true of the moral emotion : appro-
bation of the virtuous and reprehension of the wicked, are the
dual expression of the one, single right disposition of conscience.

Thus aU the feelings may be shown to go in pairs, as pleasure
and pain, wonder and ennui, subUmity and disgust, beauty and
ugliness, love and hatred, gratitude and resentment, beneficence
and malice, fear and bravery, pride and humility, approbation
and rex3rehension, self-satisfaction and shame. And the whole
list of Desires, whether for continued existence, j)ower, money,
fame, ease, has its counterpart list of Aversions, for death, weak-
ness, poverty, reproach, sickness. Thus our anah'sis is at once
simphfied, and the number of cases to be reduced is diminished
by one-half.

ly. This seems the suitable place to refute two kindred, or
we may say, virtually identical, theories, which boast of a still
greater simphfication, and have infused boundless fallacies inta
the science of ethics. These writers say : Give us two feelings,
only, the sensibihties to pleasure and paifi, and we have aU the

THE EMOTIONS. 287

elements necessary to account for the multiplicity of human
emotions. An object happens by chance to affect us a few times
with pain or pleasure. We remember the effect of its presence.
This memory of the experienced pain or pleasure is supposed to
be sufficient to generate subsequent aversion or desire towards
that object. Desire, then, is only rational self -calculation, pro-
posing to itself to seek the same means in order to repeat the
feeling of pleasure.

Hartley had applied his favorite doctrine of association for
virtually the same purpose. The Mills, father and son, and even
the witty Sydney Smith, heartily adopted the scheme. The " as-
sociational philosophers," dazzled by the power association evi-
dently has over our ideas, and the wonders which this faculty
works in suggestion and imagination, were led to suppose that
they could account for all the higher functions of the reason by
association, without postulating for the mind any of those a
priori cognitions and judgments which were so obnoxious to this
empirical school. They thought they could account for memory
as a mere result of associated ideas. Our most fundamental
judgments of relation were to be explained as a sort of trick the
mind got into by seeing two ideas associated in a certain way, of
supposing them necessarily related that way. Our belief in the
tie of cause and effect, they said, was nothing but a habit of ex-
pecting a consequent to follow a given antecedent, simply because
they had been so often associated so. What wonder that these
men thought they could also account for all the marvels of emo-
tion with the two simple elements of experienced pain and plea-
sure, and their magician, association? Thus : Experienced pain
has been associated with a given object a number of times.
Afterward the sight of the object, by the law of association, sug-
gests those former pains, and this is the genesis of the emotion
oifear. Other objects caused pleasure. By the same power of
association their presence suggested that former pleasure, and
that gave birth to desire. Or if the rational faculty joined to the
association a probable expectation of attainment, that was Jiope.
The sight of the kind mother, by the associative tie, suggests to
the boy or girl the many personal pleasures of which she had
been the source, from the first remembered draught of nourish-
ment out of her generous breasts to the last ministration of

288 THE EMOTIONS.

relief or enjoyment; and tliat string of associations constitutes
jilial love and gratitude. We see a person suffering ; the associa-
tion wliicli tlie spectacle revives of our former suffering gives us
a gentle pain, and that is sympathy !

Now, in refuting this notable scheme, it need not be denied
that our feelings do fall within the wonderful tie of association,
nor that this faculty has a potent influence in combining and
modifying the emotions. But elements must exist before they
can combine ; and the associative faculty, whose whole power is
to procure the reproduction of ideas or feelings before connected,
has no power to generate. The chief plausibility of this scheme
is derived fi-om its success in accounting iov fear, as only remem-
bered pain associated vdth its cause. But when we take another
step in their process the 23lausibihty vanishes. If their plan is
correct, should we not account for all our aversions precisely as
we account for our fears? But then aversion and fear should
be the same, but they are often widely distinguished.

But the more thorough and obvious refutation is to remark,
that the whole trick of this analysis is in assuming that there is
one pain and one pleasure only. But pains and pleasures are
many and diverse. Some are animal, some spiritual. Is the
pain of a stripe from the rod quivering in the animal nerves of
the gross and selfish child the same with the pain of conscience
awakened in the spirit of the ingenuous boy by the tears of the
mother, who, while she disapproves, is too loving to strike ? Can
the one pain be analyzed into the other by any jugglery of the
associations? No. This Hartleian scheme thus begs the ques-
tion at the outset, by confounding, under the names of pain and
pleasure, functions of feehng widely distinct and equally original.

The fact substantiated under our second head equally refutes it.
As soon as we ask the question, Can any object whatsoever oc-
casion in man's spirit any feeling whatsoever? the negative
which common sense at once pronounces to that simple inqidiy
gives us the material of this argument. Did the clod occasion
the same joy and desire in the racer's mind as the golden crown ?
May a heap of rubbish be possibly the object of an aesthetic
pleasure as the rainbow may be ? Can a human spirit be pleased
at being talked about abusively, as well as by being talked of
approvingly ? Of coui'se not. But why not ? The answer is as

THE EMOTIONS. 289

simple as fundamental: tliat tliere must exist, in the sensitive
spirit, a capacity or specific disposition establishing a relevancy
of the soul to the specific class of objects. And that disposition
must exist as a subjective law of the soul previous and in order
to the result, the rise of the different feeling. It would be as
reasonable to say that the rivulet generated the spring as to
assert that the feeling implanted the disposition and capacity,
whose preexistence is in order to the rise of the feeling. Hart-
ley has missed, then, and totally overlooked the main fact in the
problem. Since pains and pleasures are many, and are natur-
ally distinct, it is vain to talk of a plan by which one pain and
one pleasure may generate many other coordinate and equally
original pains and pleasures.

Association, least of all, can work this effect. For the very
nature of this mental process is to connect ideas and feelings
by some tie of preexistence together in the mind — resemblance,
contrast, causation, or logical relation — so that the one idea shall
reproduce the other. That is all. But mere reproduction does
not transmute. The suggested idea merely arises such as it was
when cognized before, save as it is now thought in some new
connection. Hence, all these theories which seek to make asso-
ciation the generator of different mental states from those first
associated are worthless. Let us test in this way, for instance,
the genesis of filial love and gratitude from the child's associa-
tions of experienced natural pleasures with the kind mother's
person. Those pleasures, when experienced, were personal and
selfish. But the very essence of fihal love is to be disinterested.
How could the mere circumstance that these pleasures are re-
vived by suggestion in association with the mother's image work
all that mighty change into an affection of the opposite class ?
Again, how do we get from such a source an ethical affection
for the mother, including the judgment and sentiment of right,
merit, desert, and obligation? Why should these remembered
personal pleasures generate a love different from that felt for the
kindly cow, which relieved the child's hunger more constantly
than the mother's bosom ; or for the jolly toy, which gave him
as many gay moments as the mother's caresses? There are
loves, again, which go out towards objects which are sources of
our griefs and not our joys : the mother's love for her new-born

Vol. III.— 19.

290 THE EMOTIONS.

iBfant, wliicli, up to tliat moment when slie enshrines it in her
heart of hearts, had made its existence as ?ifojtus known to her
only in the pains of gestation and the agonies of parturition ;
the parent's love attaching to a child whose faults and cruelties
only pierce the lo%'iug heart with sorrows.

It is unnecessary to pursue the parallel process with the sup-
posed generation of sympathy from our own remembered pains
and of the other afiections. The argument is so similar as not
to need repetition.

The other branch of the theory which accounts for appetency
as the deliberate self-calculation arguing from pleasures before
experienced to the repetition of their means, receives a more
easy and popular answer. How was the soul carried to the ap-
petency of that object the first time it sought it? Not by the
experience of the pleasure derived from the object, for there has
been no experience as yet, this being the first experiment. Here
the theory breaks down hopelessly. Now, when the soul sought
the object of its appetency the first time, the impulse to do so
could not have been calculated, but it must have been immedi-
ate and instinctive. But this first instance of appetency is of
the same class of mental affections with all the subsequent in-
stances of the same appetency. In the subsequent ones, then,
this immediate and instinctive desire cannot be absent, which
was the sole element in the first and most characteristic instance.
It is not meant to deny that rational calculation, founding on
remembered experiences of advantage, does afterwards mingle
with and reinforce instinctive desire ; all that is argued is that
it cannot first generate it, any more than a child can procreate
its own parent. Let us suppose that a physiologist was asked :
What causes the new-born infant to imbibe its natural nourish-
ment? and that he were to reply: "The cause is its experience
of the sweetness of the mother's milk." The folly of the answer
would be transparent. How did the infant know it was sweet
before it had tasted it? By similar reasoning it appears that,
as this infant seeks the mother's breast under the guidance of
an orisrinal and inliorn animal instinct, so all the soul's elemen-
tal appetencies are spiritual instincts. This truth reflects new-
honor upon the "snsdom of him who fashioned human spirits,
when we come to perceive the "final causes" of the original feel-

THE EMOTIONS. 291

ings. The designs wliicli the Maker pursues in them are so pro-
found that we learn man "is fearfully and wonderfully made,"
not only as to his anatomy, but as to the frame-work of his
feelings.

Y. We advance now to the true classification of the elemental
feelings. We have already found them fundamentally separated
by a dual division into sensibilities and appetencies, the former
passive and produced by an external cause, the latter active and
springing from a siibjective source. Then, in view of another
principle of division, we found them all falling into pairs : sensi-
bihties, pleasurable or painful ; and appetencies, either of desire
or aversion; and each pair the expression, not of two, but of one
original disposition of soul, yielding the contrary feehngs in re-
sponse to opposite objects. Still another basis of a dichotomy
was found by remembering that man is corporeal and spiritual,
and has, accordingly, animal sensibilities and mental. The pas-
sive sensations experienced in the animal susceptibility are im-
pressions on the bodily senses ; the corresponding appetencies
are known by the name " appetites." In popular language, these
are usually limited to the appetitive part of thirst, hunger, and
the sexual sensibility. But it would be curious and interesting
to inquire whether each of the appetencies occasioned by the
sensation impressed on the other animal senses is not equally
entitled to be called an " appetite." Why may we not say that
the peasant whose back itches has an appetite to scratch, as
properly as we say that, when thirsty, he has an appetite to
drink? When the eye is wearied by confinement in darkness,
may we not say that it has an "appetite" for the light? When
the musician's ear is wearied by silence, why should we not
speak of him as having an "appetite" for harmony? But waiv-
ing this question, we only add that the pleasures and pains of
the sensuous aesthetic — we shall meet the mental aesthetic feel-
ings further on — and the desires and aversions occasioned by
them, also belong to this division of feelings.

There remain, then, to discuss the mental feehngs of the two
classes: the sensibilities and appetencies which inhabit the ra-
tional spirit properly, as distinguished from the animal nature,
to which the senses contribute nothing except the remoter min-
isterial service of channels for the cognitions which occasion

292 THE EMOTIONS.

the spiritual feelings. Let this be more clearly viewed in an
instance. The virtuous man is informed -of the utterance of a
base lie. The feeling which we take into account here is the
ethical loathing he feels for the falsehood. Now, it may be
asked, had not this virtuous man employed his acoustic sense,
would his mind have known that the foul sin of lying had oc-
curred? No; the bodily acoustic sense has been the channel
of the cognition. But the evil quahty which occasions his
mental abhorrence does not at all reside in the sou?ids through
which, by the ministry of the ear, his mind cognized the evil lie.
It is not that these sounds Avere grating or unmelodious, or the
words unrhetorical. The vice is in the thouglits tittered by the
liar; and the moral feeling is spiritual, and not sensuous.

Looking, then, only to the feelings of the mind, and excluding
bodily sensations and appetites, we venture to suggest, as an
imperfect and tentative arrangement, the following classification.
The first column contains the objects, on the presence of which
in cognition feeling is conditioned. These objects, as explained,
fall into pairs. The second column contains the corresponding
sensibilities; and the third the corresponding appetencies, also
appearing in pairs of opposites. But each pair of pairs reveals
only one subjective disposition or capacity of feehng in the soul.
So that the whole variety of feelings is reduced to nine 2:)rincvples.

These nine elements of disposition, susceptibility, and cona-
tion, of course combine in various ways, producing many forms
of complex feeling. Of these a few have been indicated in the
table. The moral emotion may combine in many of these, as
with instinctive resentment, love, sympathy, and modify the
products. So the sensuous affections may combine with others,
as love, selfishness, sympathy, and ambition, or avarice, pro-
ducing the most energetic results, of which some are criminal
and some legitimate.

The eight traits of disposition, with their resulting capacities
for sensibihty and conation, are implanted by our Maker in our
souls. The ninth disposition was introduced by the fall. We
may safely conclude that, had a given capacity no legitimate and
innocent scope for its exercise, a wise and holy God would never
have implanted it in the man made in his image. Hence, while
the perversions of these feelings, produced by the combination

THE EMOTIONS.

293

of the ninth, native depravity, are all miscliievous and criminal,
there must be exercises of the other eight which are lawful.
There is a legitimate wonder, curiosity-, mirth, admiration, desire
of power, delight in a good name. It is possible for a man to
"be angry and sin not." There is a desire for one's own wel-
fare, which is not sinful self-love, or the craving for unrighteous
advantage and good. There is a generous emulation, which is
sympathy with our fellow's manifested energy.

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294 THE EMOTIONS.

Let US pause liere to remark in this instance upon the impor-
tant Ught thrown by a just analysis and classification of the feel-
ings upon their moral quality. The emotion of emulation has
been by some moralists applauded, and by others condemned.
Some teachers and rulers appeal freely to it as a wholesome
stimulus to effort. Others deprecate all use of the principle, as
depraving to the morals. Now, if we conceive no emulation,
save that which is the outcome of envy, the latter are right.
For envy can only be criminal and malignant. It is a mixture
of selfishness, pride, and hatred, as quickened by the contempla-
tion of a rival's superiority. The appetency of will which at-
tends it is not the laudable desire to advance one's self, but the
mean craving to depress and degrade the rival. The envious
man does not wish himself better, but his competitor Avorse.
Were all emulation but a phase of this vile emotion, it must
always be wrong. But is there not a totally different phase?
Every thoughtful man knows that the great law of sympathy ex-
tends to other affections besides sorrow. We sympathize with
our fellow's joy, with his hope, with his courage, with his fear,
with his resentment, with his mirth, just as we do with his grief.
The philosophic meaning of -ddo:; is not sorrow merely, but feel-
ino-, all feeling; and aoji-ddeca is the social infection of the one
with all the forms of his neighbor's 7:0.6/^^0.70.. Now, love of ac-
tion, energy, is a feeling, and a legitimate and noble one. T\Tiy
may not the ingenuous spirit, witnessing the flame of this ani-
mating emotion, instinctively sympathize with it, just as he would
with his neighbor's sorrow, or terror, or gladness? Doubtless
this disinterested sympathy is felt. There is, then, an emulation
which is sympathy icith another's energy. It is from wholly an-
other element of emotion than envy. It is not malignant, but
just and generous. It does not crave to drag its honorable com-
petitor down, but rightfully to raise itself up. And thus the
Scriptures are justified and reconciled Avith themselves, which
in one place rank "emulation" among the evil fruits of the
"flesh"; and in another enjoin us to "provoke one another to
good works."

The consistency of the classification proposed above must be
left mainly to speak for itself. The reader's own reflections will
pursue the hints which it presents him. This article is already

THE EMOTIONS. 295

approacliing tlie limits of allowable length, and room can be
claimed only for two other points.

One of these is the evident prevalence of "final cause"
throughout the structure of the emotions. Every one has been
fashioned with design. The skill with which they are all fash-
ioned to educe their results bespeaks the Creator's wisdom and
benevolence just as clearly as the structure of the human eye.
"What was the end designed, in imbuing the mind with the sensi-
bility of iconder and its corresponding appetency of curiosity ?
To stimulate man to learn and to make his newly acquired
knowledge sweet to him. Why was the law of sympathy estab-
lished? To provide a spontaneous and ready succor for the
distressed ; to connect men in social ties, and to enable them to
double their joys and divide their sorrows by sharing them.
What is the " final cause " of instinctive resentment ? To ener-
gize the innocent, weak man against aggression, and thus to
prevent his giving additional impetus to the unjust assailant
through timidity and sloth. But we must forbear this attrac-
tive line of thought.

Psychologists, in explaining the dispositions and classifying
the native feelings of the soul, almost uniformly overlook the one
we have placed in the ninth rank, native depravity. But we hold
that the same sort of inquiry and reasoning from facts, which
leads them to hold that the love of applause is a native trait of
man's heart, should cause them to count depravity equally among
man's constitutive dispositions. Why this grave and most incon-
sistent omission ? Has the pride of reason blinded them ? Kant
is the only great writer, not teaching from the theological point
of view, who has stated the psychological truth as to this trait,
and therein he shows his acuteness and honesty at once. This
original depravity he defines as a subjective "propensity" {pro-
pensio) prompting the soul to adopt something else than duty, as
sensual good, selfishness, advantage, for the prevalent rule of vol-
untary actions. But notwithstanding this deplorable election,
these lower motives may prompt the man to many actions for-
mally right, as business honesty, domestic kindness ; so that the
man's conduct may be to a large degree moral. Yet the man
himself is fundamentally immoral, radically depraved, because
he has deposed from his soul what is entitled to be the supreme

■296 THE EMOTIONS.

rule of all actions, and established tlie unrigliteoi;s rule of self-
will, so tliat erery one of liis acts is bad in motive, at least by
defect. If we ask wliat subjective cause determines tlie original
propensity to determine the will to this life of disobedience, we
raise an absurd question. For, if an answer could be found,
this would only raise a prior question. What determined that
antecedent determining cause of propensity? The regressus
would be endless. We must stop, then, wath the inscrutable but
indisputable fact, original evil propensity. It is the end for us
of all possible analysis. But to preclude the sinner from the
cavil, "Then my propensity, being native, infringes my free
agency by a physical necessity, so that I am not responsible
for the volitions that result," Kant argues acutely, that this pro-
pensity to evil is none the less a function of spontaneity, be-
cause it is original. For it is as truly and as freely elected into
the soul by its free agency as is any specific act of evil freely
willed by the sinner. Is not this propensity to evil as truly, as
freely, as thoroughly, the soul's preference as any single bad act
it ever willed ? The propensity reigns in the soul by virtue of a
perpetual, continuing act of spontaneity, unrelated to time. Each
specific sin that soul commits is a similar act of spontaneity, re-
lated to some particular point in time. Hence, the soul's de-
terminate preference for sin is both certain and free, and there-
lore responsible. The evidence by which Kant proves the ex-
istence of this original depravity is very plain and short. All
men sin, both in the savage and civilized states, and the morals
of nations (which have no earthly restrainer over them, and con-
sequently show out man's real animwi) are simply those of out-
laws or demons. International relations dx& frequently those of
active robbery and murder, and all tlie time those of expecta-
tion and preparation for robbery and murder.

Kant's description of that mixture of good and evil conduct
which natural men exhibit, which yet coexists with radical de-
pravity of will, is luminous and correct. We do not say that
because the natural man is radically depraved, he is therefore as
bad as man can be, or as bad as he may become in future. We
do not condemn his social virtues as all hypocrisies. Many af-
fections in this man are still normal and legitimate, and they
concur in prompting many actions. His ethical reason in those

THE EMOTIONS. 297

judgments which recognize the Tightness and obligation of God's
holy law is not essentially corrupted, and cannot be, except by
lunacy. This sacred judgment of conscience in favor of the right
has not wholly lost its force in this man. But he holds God's
law persistently dethroned from the place of universal supremacy
in his soul, to which it is entitled. When he does the formally
right thing, he does not do it supremely to please God. When
the law of right comes into clear competition with the law of
self-will, the man always gives the preference to his own diso-
bedient will. His conduct may be mixed — some good, some
bad — but his soul as a moral monad, incapable of an ethical neu-
trality, is decisively against duty. The man is radically depraved.

In proving psychologically that the disposition to evil is a na-
tive spring of feelings and volitions, just as truly as the love of
applause, the desire of happiness, or the love of the beautiful,
it is not necessary, then, to assert that every natural man desires
to break every rule of right. All we have to prove is, that every
natural man is fully determined to commit some sins — such as his
other propensities do not restrain him from — and to neglect
some known duties. When an exact naked issue is made be-
tween God's holy will and self-will, the latter has the invariable
preference.

Our first evidence is an appeal to consciousness. Let the man
who is in the state of nature answer honestly the question,
whether it is his present j)reference and (by God's grace) pur-
pose to act from this time up to every known obligation, espe-
cially those due to God, and to forsake now every known sin,
and he must say no. He thinks he admires virtue as a whole
and in the future. To some of the particxilar parts of virtue he
has, at this time, an inexorable opposition. Observation shows
us that while some men are far less wicked than others, every
natural man transgresses in some known things deliberately and
repeatedly. The only man of whom the writer ever heard who
asserted his entire freedom from the dominion of sin was a Col.
Higginson, a Boston Socinian, who in one of Joseph Cook's
"symposia,'" declared that he had never in his life slighted a
monition of conscience. But this claim to a perfect natural
holiness was rather damaged with all men of common sense
when it became known that in the Confederate war he had

298 THE EMOTIONS.

raised and commanded a regiment of runaway-negroes to invade
his fellow-citizens. Thus he ran greedily into the very wicked-
ness which his political gospel, the Declaration of Independence,
had charged against George III. One is not surprised to find
in such a boaster just that blindness of heart which would pre-
vent his seeing the cruelty and wickedness of arming against his
brethren semi-savages and slaves, whose allegiance to their mas-
ters was solemnly guaranteed by the very constitution under
which he pretended to act !

Again, if we trace this alDsolute aversion to duty hack in each
man's history, we find its apj^earance coincident in every child
with the earliest development of reason and conscience. When
first the child's mind comes to know duty rationall}', he knows it
but to hate it, at least in some of its forms. All sensible per-
sons who rear children discover that then* sin is in part always
a development from within, and not a mere habit learned from
imitation, or pro23agated by bad treatment and unwholesome
outward infliiences. So true is this that the average child, left
to its own expansion "v\dthout any moral nurture or restraint,
would be so much worse than the average child reared under a
faulty and e^dl discipline, that average men would regard him as
a monster. AVe ^-iew the evil of the nature of little children
Tinder an illiTsion. We call them " little innocent babes." Be-
cause their bodily and mental powers of executing their impulses
are so weak, we think of them as harmless. The animal beauty
of their bodies seduces our judgments. But let this picture be
considered. Let us take the moral traits of an ordinary infant,
his petulance, his unreasoning selfishness, his inordinate self-
will, his vengefulness, his complete indifi"erence, whenever any
whim of his own is to be gratified, to the convenience or fatigue
and distress of his loving mother or nurse, his entire insubordi-
nation to all force but corporeal, his bondage to bodily appetite,
his uncalculating cruelty. Suppose him, instead of appealing to
your pity by his helplessness, embodying precisely these quah-
ties in the frame of a robust adult, we should have a wretch
from whom his own mother would flee in terror. Does one say
that these dispositions, which would be hateful sins in an adult,
are no sins at all in the infant, because he has as yet no intelli-
gence to know they are wi'ong? We reply with this question:

THE EMOTIONS. 299

If this child were left absolutely free from all external restraints,
when his intelligence came to him, would he therefor forsake these
dispositions f Experience tells us he would not. But fortunately
for society, while his native evil is at its greatest, his faculties of
execution are at their weakest. Thereby Providence subjects
him from the outset to an ever-present apparatus of restraints
and discipline, which, by the time his powers of mischief are
grown, have curbed his native depravity within bounds tolerable
to society.

Now, how can the existence of any native principle of feeling
be better proved than by the fact that some degrees of it are
found in every man ; that it appears from the first in each, and
that it develops along with the growth of his faculties ? Is there
any other or stronger proof by which psychologists show that
the aesthetic sensibilit}^ sympathy, resentment, love, are native
to man ?

One more fact remains : that this aversion to duty and love of
sinful self-will operates with determining energy, and against all
possible inducements. This dominancy of the feeling exhibits
itself especially, in many cases, in resisting and conquering in-
ducements which, rationally, ought to be irresistible. For in-
stance, the love of life is usually supreme. Here is a man who
is indulging a sensual sin to the injury and destruction of life
itself. He is clearly forewarned ; but he does not stop. In an-
other man avarice, in another inordinate ambition, is his dearest
permanent appetency. The one has wealth, the other fame and
power, within his reach. But each is falling under the power of
drunkenness, which is known to be destructive to fortune and to
reputation. But this fact does not arrest the course of indul-
gence ; the able, energetic man finally sacrifices his own dearer
desire to the low and sensual vice. Or if we take the general
view of this matter, it can be made clear to any understanding
that, on the whole, a course of temperance, prudence and virtue
will be best for every man's own happiness. In the final out-
come any and every sin must subtract from man's highest good.
Indeed, this conclusion is the testimony of every man's con-
science. Let men be urged, then, to make this true self-interest
their uniform guide ; to eschew all evil, and perfoi'm all duty.
In each man the appetency to sin will assert itself still,

300 THE E:\rOTIONS.

against the man's own liighest interest and most reasonable self-
love.

But it is when we observe man's uniform neglect of the duties
of godliness that this rebellion of sinful self-will becomes most
marked. Here the inducements to repentance are literally im-
mense, including all the worth of heaven and dreadfulness of
hell. ^Tien the problem is urged, "What shall it profit a man
to gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" the judgment
of every man's understanding is, of course, absolutely clear
against the exchange. Or, if the sinner pleads, "I do not decide
this horrible exchange ; I only postpone the right decision in fa-
vor of God, and my soul, and heaven ; " when we show him the
unutterable rashness of this delay, and show that he is staking
an eternity of blessedness on a very perilous chance, against a
worthless bauble of self-indulgence, his understanding is equally
clear against his own proceeding. But none the less does he
proceed in the paths of ungodliness.

Now, in mechanics we measure a force by the resistance it
uniformly overcomes. And so it is correct to measure the en-
ergy of this appetency for transgression by the rational and
moral obstacles which it overcomes

Here, then, is a fundamental dislocation in man's soul. In
his appetencies, man's subjective spontaneity finds its expression.
They inspire the "^ill ; they regulate from within the whole free
agency. In them centres man's activity. But on the other
hand, conscience claims to be the rightful and rational ruler of
mankind. It utters its commands with an intuitive authority;
it is as impossible for one to doubt whether conscience, diily en-
lightened, is entitled to be obeyed, as to doubt his own exist-
ence or identity. We have, then, this situation in each natural
soul : the s-uprenu faculty of the reason at war with the funda-
mental appetency of the free agency. And this fatal coUision
presents itself on the most important of all the soul's concerns
— duty; that on which the soul's destiny consciously turns.
There has been, then, a catastrophe in human nature ! Just as
clearly as "there was war in heaven when Satan and his angels
fought with Michael and his angels," there is a strife going on
in the firmament of man's spirit. We see no such dislocation
in the natural laws of either man, or animal, or inorganic nature,

THE EMOTIONS. 301

in any other instance. In man's other faculties there is entire
consilience. Perception, memory, suggestion, imagination,
reasoning, all work together in substantial harmony. The laws
of material nature concur. Or else, if we perceive in sentient
beings any disorder similar to the one we have displayed in man's
soul, we at once say, " There is disease." Is there not, then, a
moral disease infecting the soul? It cannot be disputed.

When and how was this disease contracted ? How can it be
effectually remedied ? To these momentous questions, philoso-
phy has no answer. If we attempt to solve the second by say-
ing, "Self-discipline can and must subdue the propensity to
sin," philosophy herself meets us with this fatal difficulty:
Whence is the effectual motive to that subjugation of the un-
godly self-will to arise within man himself? The dominant ap-
petency has already pronounced, always pronounces, in favor of
self-will and against conscience ! Kant has seen, and stated with
transparent clearness, this insuperable point. The soul is a free
agent wherever it is responsible. True. Its action is self-de-
termined? True. But unless the soul is an anomaly, a mon-
strosity in nature, an agent acting by no law whatever, it must
contain some regulative law of its own determinations. If we
violate its freedom by supposing an external objective law, then,
at least, we have to suppose a subjective law regulative of its
actions. What can that subjective law be but disposition —
hahihtsl But as to this issue of an ungodly self-will against
duty, we find there the regulative, ultimate propension, and it is
f'iindmnentally against this suhjugation of self -will. This deci-
sion is native. Now, how can nature reverse nature ? How can
the first cause reverse its own law of effects ? Can the fountain
naturally propel its own stream against its own level?

The remedy for this spiritual disease, then, must begin, if it
ever begins at all, in a supernatural source. So saith Scripture.
John i. 13 ; iii. 5.

CIYIC ETHICS.

PASSING now from the social morals of the family to the
general ethics of social duties, we meet the fact that the
ci\'il government is the appointed regulator and guardian of
all these. Hence these duties take the form of civic morals, and
our rights and duties as citizens meet us at the front. The dis-
cussion naturallj^ begins with the question, What is the moral
ground of my obligation to obey the magistrate, whom yester-
day, before he was inducted into office, I would have scorned to
recognize as my master, to whom to-day I must bow in obedi-
ence? Three opposing theories have been advanced in our day
in answer to this qiiestion. The first answer is that I am bound
to obey him solely because I have consented to do so. This is
the theory which founds government in a "social contract,"
which, first stated by Thomas Hobbes, of Malmesbuiy, was
made popular among English Liberals by John Locke, and, in-
troduced to the French by Rousseau's famous book, Le Contrat
Social, became the ruling philosophy of the French Jacobins.
This apprehends men as at first insulated individuals, human
integers, all naturally equal and absolutely free, having a natu-
ral liberty to indulge, each one, his whole practical -^tII as a
"lord of creation." But the experience of the inconveniences
of the mutual violences of so many hostile wills, with the loss of
so many advantages, led them, in time, to consent voluntarily
to the surrender of a pai-t of their wills, natural rights, and in-
dependence, to gain a more secure enjoyment of the remainder.
To effect this they are supposed to have conferred, and to have
entered into a compact with each other, covenanting to submit
to ceiiain restraints upon their natural libei-ty, and to submit to
certain of their equals elected to ride, in order to get their re-
maining rights protected. Subsequent citizens entering the so-
ciety by biiih or immigration are supposed to have given their
sovereign assent to this compact, expressly, as in having them-

302

CIVIC ETHICS. 303

selves naturalized, or else impliedly, by remaining in the land.
The terms of compact form the organic law, or constitution of
the commonwealth ; and the reason why men are bound to obey
their equal, or possible inferior, as magistrate, is simply that
they have bargained, and are getting their quid pro quo.

Many writers, as Burlemarqui and Blackstone, are too intelli-
gent to suppose or claim that any human persons ever rightfully
existed, in fact, in the independent state described, or that any
commonwealth actually originated in such an optional bargain ;
but they teach that such a non-existent compact must be as-
sumed as implied, and as virtually accounting for the origin of
civic obligation. Thus Blackstone, II. Intro., § 2, p. 47. But to
us it appears that this species of legal fiction is a poor basis for
a moral theory, and is no source of natural right and obligations.

The second theory may be called theistic, tracing civic obli-
gation to the will and ordinance of God our Creator. It answers
that we are bound to obey the civil magistrate, because God,
who has the right as creator and sovereign, commands it. This
command is read by all Christian citizens in sacred Scripture,
which says, " The powers that be are ordained of God," and
" Whosoever resisteth, resisteth the ordinance of God." It is
read again in the light of natural facts and reason. These facts
are mainly two, that God created man a social being, which is
so true that without social relations man would utterly fail of
reaching his designed development and happiness, and indeed
would perish, and that man's personal appetencies ever tend
to engross to himself the rights of others. Selfishness is ever
inclining to infringe the boundaries of equity and philanthropy.
Hence it is the ordinance of nature that man shall live in society ;
and that man in society must be restrained from injuring his
fellows. And there are no other hands than human ones to
wield this power of restraint. We are thus taught as clearly as
by Scripture itself, that the Creator ordained civil government
and wills all men to submit to it. The same argument may be
placed in this Hght : Men are rational, moral, and responsible
creatures. Righteousness is their proper law. But personal
selfishness tends perpetually to transgress that law, hence arises
the necessity of restraint. Thus, the only alternatives are, sub-
mission to civil government, which is such restraint, or an ulti-

304 .CJJVIG ETHICS.

mate prevalence of aggression, wliicli would destroy the very-
ends of social existence. AVitness tlie wretched and savage state
of all human beings who are wholly without any form of gov-
ernment. Here we are met by a cavil which is expressed by
some, and which has evidently embarrassed many other moral
writers. This is, that God ought not to be introduced into this
discussion, because God and his will are theological facts ; but
since this inquiry is concerning natural right and secular rela-
tions, it ought to be decided exclusively upon natural data, with-
out importing into it other premises from the alien field of
theology. To this I answer, tliat in reality there is no fact
among the data of moral science so jDurely natural as God. As
soon as the mind begins to reason on the j^henomena of nature
and experience, it is led in one direction to God, at least as im-
mediately and necessarily as it is led in other directions to
gravity, causation, conscience, free agency or any other natural
fact. God is not only one proper factor, but the prior one, in
the philosophy of our moral nature, seeing he created it, and his
nature is the concrete standard of moral perfection ; and his
preceptive will, the expression of that nature, is the practical
source and rule of all our obligations. He is, therefore, not only
the first, but the essential and most natural of all the factors in
every question of natural right. To attempt to discuss those
questions, omitting him and his will, is just as unreasonable as it
would have been in Newton to discuss j^lanetary astronon}', and
the orbital motion of the planets, leaving out all reference to
the sun. And this is justified, last, by the remark, that in con-
structing our theory of civic obligations, we introduce God, not
in his theologic relations as Redeemer, but in his natural rela-
tion as creator and moral ruler. I am happy to find my position
thus sustained by the great German statesman and philosopher,
Dr. Julius Stahl, (quoted by Dr. Chas. Hodge Tlieol. Vol. III. p.
260) : " Every philosophical science must begin with the first prin-
ciple of all things, that is, with the Absolute. It must, therefore,
decide between Theism and Pantheism, between the doctrine that
the first principle is the jDersonal, extra mundane, self-revealing
God, and the doctrine that the first principle is an impersonal
pov/er immanent in the world." It is the Christian doctrine of
God and of his relation to the world that he makes the founda-

CIVIC ETHICS. 305

tion of legal and political science. He controverts tlie doctrine
of Grotius that there wonld be a jus naturale if there were no
God, which is really equivalent to saying that there would be
an obligation to goodness if there were no such thing as good-
ness. Moral excellence is of the very essence of God. He is
concrete goodness, infinite reason, excellence, knowledge, and
power, in a personal form ; so that there can be no obligation to
virtue which does not involve obligation to God.

The theistic scheme, then, traces civil government and the civic
obligation to the will and act of God, our sovereign, moral ruler
and proprietor, in that he from the first made social principles
a constitutive part of our souls, and placed us under social rela-
tions that are as original and natural as our own persons. These
relations were : first of the family, then of the clan, and, as men
multiplied, of the commonwealth. It follows thence that social
government in some form is as natural as man. If asked, whence
my obligation to obey my equal, or possible inferior, as civil
magistrate? it answers, because God wills me to do it. He has
an infinite right. The advantages and conveniences of such an
arrangement may illustrate and even reinforce the obligation;
they do not originate it. Civil government is an ordinance of
the Maker ; magistrates receive place and power under his provi-
dence. They are his ministers to man.

This theory, pushed to a most vicious extreme by the party
known as Legitimists, is the third which has had some currency.
These advocates of the divine right of royalty teach, that while
government is the ordinance of God, its first form was the family,
in which the father was the sovereign, and this is the type of all
larger commonwealths. Every chief magistrate should therefore
be a king, holding the same sovereign relation to their subjects
which fathers hold to their children. As in the patriarchal clans
of Scripture, the birth-right descended to the eldest son and
carried with it the headship of the clan, so the right to reign is
hereditary in the king's eldest son. To deprive him of it is to
rob him of his rightful inheritance. Subjects, if discontented with
their king, have no more right to replace him by another chief
magistrate elected by themselves, than minor children have to
vote in a new father. If the hereditary monarch becomes op-
pressive, the only remedy for the subject is humble jDetition aud

Vol. III.— 20.

306 CIYIC ETHICS.

passive obedience. There is uo right of revolution. Oppressed
subjects must wait for a release by divine providence. And in
support of this slavish theory they quote the precepts of the
apostles. (Rom. xiii. ; 1 Peter ii. 13-17.)

This servile theory I thus refute. Men in society do not bear
to their rulers the proportion minor children bear to their
parents, in weakness, inexperience, or folly, but are generally
the natural equal of their rulers. Nor are the citizens the
objects of an instinctive natural love in the breasts of kings,
similar to that of parents for their children, powerfully prompt-
ing a disinterested and humane government of them. The pre-
tended analogy is utterly false. Second, whereas divine authority
is claimed for royalty, God did not give a regal government to
his chosen people Israel ; but his preference was to make them
a federal republic of eleven cantons. When he granted a king
at their request, it was not an hereditary one. The monarchy
was elective. David was not the son of Saul, but was elected
by the elders of Israel. It is true that the prestige of his hero-
ism enabled him to nominate his immediate successor, Solomon,
who yet was not his eldest son. After Solomon, the elders of
Israel were willing to elect his son Rehoboam ; but upon ascer-
taining his tyrannical purposes they elected Jeroboam. And the
reader must note that they are nowhere in Scripture blamed for
this election, nor for their secession ; and Rehoboam, who had
been elected by two tribes, when proposing coercion is strictly
forbidden by God. So Jehu, elected by divine direction, was
not a successor of the house of Ahab. Third, the New Testa-
ment does not command us especially to obey kings, but "the
powers that be." Scripture thus makes the ^e y^c^o government,
whatever may be its character, the object of our allegiance within
the limits of conscience. And it is fatal to these advocates of
the divine right of royalty, that the actual government which St.
Paul and St. Peter enjoined Christians to obey was neither regal
nor hereditary. It was a recent usurpation in the bosom of a
vast republican commonwealth still retaining the nominal forms
of republicanism. Julius Csesar and his nephew Octavius care-
fully rejected the title of king. The latter selected that of im-
perator, the constitutional title of the commander-in-chief of the
active armies of the I'epublic. He held his executive power by

CIVIC ETHICS. 307

annual, nominal reelection of the offices of pontifex maximus and
consul, botli republican offices. He was, in a word, wliat the
Greeks expressed by the name — zu(ja>uu^, Octavius Coesar was
not the son of Jvilius, Tiberius was not the son of Octavius,
Caius Caligula was not the son of Tiberius, Nero was not the
son of Caius. So that the fact is, that the very government to
which the early Christians were commanded to submit was a
revolutionary one, and not regal. So unfortunate have the Le-
gitimists been in claiming the authority of Scripture against the
right of revolution, and in favor of royalty. In a word, their
theory has not a particle of support in reason or God's word.
Yet the obtruding of it by so many divines as the theistic theory
doubtless did much to j^rejudice the right view.

On the contrary, the power of magistrates as between them
and the citizens is only a delegated power, and is from the com-
monwealth, which is the aggregate of citizens, to them. God has
indeed, by the law of nature and revelation, imposed on all the
citizens and on the magistrates the duty of obedience, and or-
dained that men shall live in regular civil society under laws.
But he has not given to magistrates, as such, any inherent rights
other than those belonging to other citizens. As persons, they
are equal to the citizens and of them ; as magistrates they exist
for the people and not the people for them. " They are the
ministers of God to thee for good." They personally have only
the common and equal title which their fellow citizens have to
good as being of one race, the common children of God, subject
to the golden rule, the moral charter of republicanism.

Having refuted the theory of legitimacy, or divine right of
kings, we now return to comj^lete our evidence for the right
theory, by refuting the claim of a social contract.

First, it is notoriously false to the facts. Ci^dl government is
a great fact. It must find its foundation in a fact, not in a legal
fiction. And the fact is, men never existed rightfully for one
moment in the independency this theory imagines. God, their
maker and original ruler, never gave them such independence.
Their civic responsibility, as ordained by him, is as native as
they are. They do not elect between civic subordination and
license any more than a child elects his father, but they are hoi^fi
under government. The simple practical proof is, that were any

308 CIVIC ETHICS. .

man to claim tliat natural liberty, and the option of accepting pr
declining allegiance, every government on eartli would claim the
right to destroy him as an outlaw.

Second, the theory is atheistic and unchristian. Such were
Hobbes and the Jacobins. It is true that Locke tried to hold it
in a Christian sense, but it is none the less obstinately atheistic
in that it wholly discards God, man's relation to him, his right
to determine our condition of moral existence, and the great
fact of moral philosophy, that God has formed and ordained us
to live under civil government. So, in the insane pride of its per-
fectionism, it overlooks the fact that man's will is ever disordered
and vmrighteous, and so cannot be the just rule of his actions.

Third, it also virtually discards original moral distinctions. So
did Hobbes, its author, teaching that the enactments of govern-
nnent make right and wrong. It infers this consistently, for if
man's wish made his natural right, and he has only come under
any constraint of ci^il law by his optional compact, of course
whatever he wished was right by nature. Moreover, govern-
ment being a restraint on natural right, is essentially of the
nature of an evil, to which I only submit for expediency's sake
to avoid a greater evil. Civil society is herself a grand robber
of my natural rights, which I only tolerate to save mj^self from
other more numerous robbers. How then can any of the rules
of civil government be an expression of essential morality '? And
is this scheme likely to be very promotive of content and loyalty ?

Fourth, the social contract lacks all basis of facts, and is
therefore wholly illogical. It has no claim in for o scientke to
be entertained even for discussion. For the science of natural
rights should be inductive. But this theory has no basis of
facts. Commonwealths have not historically begun in such an
optional compact of lordly savages. Such absolute savages,
could we find any considerable number of them, would not usu-
ally possess the good sense and the self-control which would be
sufficient for any permanent good. The onl}^ real historical in-
stances of such compacts have been the agreements of outlaws
forming companies of banditti, or crews of pirate ships. These
combinations realize precisely the ideals pictured b}' Hobbes,
Locke, and Rousseau. Did ever one of them result in the crea-
tion of a permanent and well-ordered commonwealth? The

CIVIG ETHICS. 309

well-known answer to this question hopelessly refutes the
scheme. Commonwealths have usually arisen, in fact, from the
expansion of clans, which were at first but larger families. True
historical research shows that the primitive government of these
clans was usually presbjterial, a government by elders who had
succeeded to the natural and inherent authority of the first
parents.

Fifth, certain inconvenient and preposterous consequences
must logically follow from the theory of the social contract.
The righteous "swear to their own hurt, and change not." No
matter, then, how the lapse of time may have rendered the old
contract unsuitable or mischievous, no majority could right-
eously change it so long as any minority claimed their pledges.
Again, unless the commonwealth has a formal constitution, who
can decide what are the terms of the social contract? England
has no written constitution. Again, if the ruler violated the es-
sence of the contract in one act, this would release all the citi-
zens from allegiance. The contract broken on one side is bro-
ken on both. But so sweeping a release of all the individual
citizens of the commonwealth from their allegiance, whenever
any essential article of the social contract had been violated,
either by a ruler or a greedy majority, would lead to intolerable
anarchy. There is a noted government which historically and
actually originated in a social compact, that of the United States
of America. It was a republic of republics, a government of
special powers, created by a federal covenant between sovereign
states, or little contiguous independent nations. The contract-
ing integers were not citizens, but states. The logical result
was that the infringement of any essential principle of the con-
stitution, which was the compact, released each contracting
party from the bond. This result inhered inevitably in the na-
ture of the federal government, as was admitted by jurisconsults
of all parties, by Josiah Quincy, President Fillmore, and Daniel
Webster as fully as by Jefferson, Madison, and Calhoun. A
government formed by a social compact is, ipso facto, dissolved
by the breach of that compact into the integers which composed
it. In the case of the United States those integers were sover-
eign commonwealths. Hence the exercise of their constitu-
tional right of secession could not result in anarchy, for the

310 CIVIC ETHICS.

original commonwealtlis survived, exercising all tlie authority
necessary to tliat civic order enjoined by natural obligation.

Last, law properly arms tlie magistrate with some powers
Avhich could not have been derived from a social contract of in-
dividuals, because the individuals never jiossessed those powers.
Life, for instance, is God's. No man can bargain away what
does not belong to him. Nor can they plead that the common-
wealth's existence justifies her in assuming a power of life and
death. But the commonwealth, on their view, has no existence
to persons as yet until the social contract is completed. Again,
how does the commonwealth get power to take the life or pro-
perty of aliens who never contracted with it ? The theory re-
presents independent men as surrendering certain natural rights
to society in order to secure the enjoyment of the rest. But I
deny that any right can be mentioned, morally belonging to any
man, of which he is stripped when entering a just government.
The one most frequently named is the right of self-defence. But
what is meant b}^ it ? The privilege of making one's self accuser,
judge, jury and executioner, at once to avenge any supposed
wrong in any manner suggested by one's own resentment? I
deny that this was ever a right of any creature of God's in any
state of existence. It is always a natural unrighteousness. It
is the right of an innocent man, when the arm of the law is not
present, to protect himself by his own personal force, even to
the destruction of the assailant, if necessary. Then I deny that
just government strips any citizen of this right. The law fully
recognizes it.

This infidel theory sets out, like an atheist as it is, without re-
ference to the fact that man's existence, nature and rights sprang
out of the personal will of a creator. It sets out without refer-
ence to original moral distinctions, or original responsibilities to
God, or to his moral essence. It quietly overlooks the fact that
man's will, if he is the creature of a personal and moral creator,
never could be in any circumstance his rule of action. It hides
away the stubborn fact that the human will is depraved, and, for
that second reason, cannot righteously be his rule. It falsely as-
sumes a state of nature in which the individual's will is inde-
pendent, and makes his right. Whereas, no being except the
eternal and self-existent God has a right to that state for

CIVIC ETHICS. 311

one instant. But all these are facts of nature, involved in this
case of civic obligation, and discoverable by reason and experi-
ence. All then miist be included in our construction, if we
would have a correct, or even a rational view. The state of
facts is simply this : Man, being a creature, enters on existence
the subject of God. This he does not only by force, but by
moral right. Moral distinctions are essential and eternal, hav-
ing been eternally impersonated in God's subjective moral prin-
ciples, and authoritatively legislated for creatures in all the pre-
cepts, to utter which God is prompted by those immanent prin-
ciples. Moral obligations on the creature are therefore as na-
tive as he is. They are binding, not by the assent of the crea-
ture's will, but by God's enactment ; so that man enters exist-
ence under social obligations, as is indicated by his being, in so
many constitutive traits, a social creature. Civil government is
nothing more than the organization of one segment of those so-
cial rights and duties Thus civil government is God's natural
ordinance. Once more, the rule of action enforced by just gov-
ernments is the moral rule. This is approximately true, even of
the government Avliich we deem relatively bad. So that a thor-
oughly just civil government, if such could be realized, would en-
join on each order of citizens only the acts which were morally
right for them to do, and forbid only those which would be wrong.

What then would be a man's civil liberty ? I reply, under a
perfectly equitable government, could such be realized, the same
as his natural liberty. No existing government is perfectly
equitable, because executed by man's imperfect hands. None
are wholly unrighteous. Some withhold more, some fewer of the
citizen's moral (and natural) rights. Hence, under the most
despotic government, some natural rights remain. Could a gov-
ernment be perfectly equitable, each citizen's civic liberty would
be exactly equal to his natural.

Some few citizens may shrink from the theory of government
in God's absolute authority over man, and denying to man any
absolute natural independence, from the apprehension that it
may lead to arbitrary civil government. To such, I reply : Is it
not far more likely that tyrannical consequences will be drawn
from the other theory which discards God, the eternal standard
and pattern of pure equity and benevolence, which postulates

312 crvic ETHICS.

tlie sinful creature's licentious aud unjust "s\'islies, as tlie ulti-
mate measure of his riglits, wliicli represents tlie natural riglits
of tlie ruler and the ruled as a very different quantity fi'om his
ciyic rights, and which discards the essential distinction between
justice and injustice a priori to legislation ? Is not this the
freer and safer theory, which founds man's inalienable rights, as
his duties, on eternal and holy moral distinctions, and holds
rulers and ruled responsible to the judgment of an equitable
heavenly Father Avith whom is "no respect of persons ?"

" By their fruits ye shall know them." I require the student
to look at Hobbes, deducing with his iron logic from this theory
of the social contract his conclusion, that government must be
leviathan, the irresistible giant among all the weaker animals.
He proves that on his theory government ought to be absolute.
For the theory recognizes neither responsibility nor allegiance
to a common heavenly Father, perfectly impartial, equitable
and benevolent, the ruler of rulers, the protector of all his chil-
dren, who will call all their oppressors to a strict account To
the Jacobin, the commonwealth is the only God, beyond which
there is no umpire, no judge, no avenger. Again, upon this
theory, the supreme rule of commonwealths' action has no stan-
dard whatever of intrinsic righteousness, equitable and immut-
able, embodied first in the moral perfections of the heavenly
Father, and then in the universal and indestructible judgment
of the right human conscience ; but the ultimate standard of
right is the mere will of each greedy and unrighteous creature.
For this system there is no morality to enforce duties or guaran-
tee rights except the human laws ; and these are merely the
expression of the cravings of this aggregate of licentious, ruth-
less, selfish aatHs.

This reasoning of course makes the will of the majority su-
preme, and says vox Populi, vox Dei. But it must be remem-
bered that this majority is only the accidental major mob, in
which the wicked will of each citizen is the supreme law; so
that the god of Jacobinism, whose voice receives this sovereign
expression, may at any time reveal himself as a fiend instead of
a benignant heavenly Father. The practical government which
residts fi*om this theory is simple absolutism, differing from the
personal despotism of a Sultan or a Czar only in this one partic-

CIYIC ETHICS. 313

ular, that its victims have that "many headed monster," the
mob, for their master, always hable to be more remorseless and
greedy in its oppressions than a single tyrant.

To this deduction history gives the fullest confirmation. The
democracies infected by this theory have ever turned out the
worst despotisms. Such was the government of the Jacobin
party in France ninety years ago, expressly deduced from the
social contract, and yet, a government guilty of more oppres-
sions, stained with more political crimes and murders of the in-
nocent, more destructive of public and private wealth than all
the despotisms of Europe together, annihilating in one decade
forty-eight billions of francs of the possessions of the French
people, and drenching Europe in a universal, causeless war, and
rendering itself so loathesome to the nation that it was glad to
escape fi'om it into the military despotism of Napoleon. The
favorite motto of this democracy is, ^^ Liberie, egalite, fraternite"
of which the practical rendering by the actions of the Jacobins
was this, ^' Liberte,'' Hcense to trample on other people as they
chose ; " Egalite" similar license for the Outs when they could
become the Ins; " Fraternite,'' all brother rogues. So aU the
worst oppressions and outrages experienced by the people of
the United States ha.ve been inflicted by the same Jacobinism,
masquerading in the garb of Republicanism.

The Declaration of Independence teaches as self-evident that
" all men are by nature equal." The proposition is highly am-
biguous. We need not be surprised to find the Jacobin party
claiming it in their sense, that every sane human being has a
moral right to a mechanical equahty with every other in every
specific privilege and franchise, except when deprived of them
by conviction of crime under the laws ; so that, if any one man
or class in society is endowed with any power or franchise what-
soever that is not extended to every other person in the com-
monwealth, this is a violation of natural justice. This famous
document is no part of the constitution or laws of the United
States. With all its nervous pomp of diction and political phil-
osophy, it involves not a few ambiguities and confusions, and
the enlightened friends of freedom have no concern to assert its
infaUibit}'. But this often quoted statement bears another
sense. There is a natural moral equahty between aU men, in

314 CIYIC ETHICS.

that all are genericallj men. All have a rational, responsible and
immortal destiny, and are inalienably entitled to pursue it. All
are morally related alike to God, the common Father ; and all
Tiave equitable title to the protection of the laws under which
divine providence places them. In this sense, as the British
constitution declares, all men, peer and peasant, " are equal be-
fore the law." The particular franchises of Earl Derby differ
much from those of the peasant : the lord sits in the upper
house, as the peasant does not ; inherits an entailed estate ; and
if indicted for felony, is tried by peers. But the same laws
protect the persons and rights of both. Both, so far as human
and as subjects of human society, have the same generic, moral
right to be protected in their several (different) just franchises.
Here are two meanings of the proposition, which are historically
perfectly distinct. If there are those who profess to see no dif-
ference, it is because they are either inconsiderate and heedless,
or uncandid. The difference was perfectly palpable to the Eng-
lish hberals who dethroned the first Charles Stiiart ; for that great
Parliament on the one hand w^aged a civil war in the support of
the moral equality of all Englishmen, and at the same time re-
jected wdth abhorrence the other, the Jacobin equahty, when
they condemned the leveller Lilburn, and caused his books,
which contained precisely that doctrine, to be bui'ned by the
common hangman. I assert that it is incredible the American
Congress of 1776 could have meant their proposition to be taken
in the Jacobin sense ; for they were British Whigs. Their per-
jDetual claim was to the principles and franchises of the British
Constitution, and no other. Their jDohtics were formed by the
teachings of John Hampden, Lord Fairfax, Algernon Sidney,
Lord Somers, and the revolutionists of 1688. I should be
loath to suj^pose those gi'eat men so stupid and ignorant of the
history of their own country as not to understand the British
Tights, w^hich they expressly say they are claiming. Second,
their English common sense showed them that the statement is
false. In the Jacobin sense men are not by nature equal. One
half of them differ by nature from the other half, in the essential
qualities of sex. There are countless natural differences of
bodily organs, health, and stature, of natural faculties and moral
dispositions. Naturally, no two men are equal in that sense.

CIVIG ETHICS. 315

Third, it is impossible tlie Congress could have intended that
sense, seeing that every one of the thirteen states then legalized
African slavery, and not a single one granted universal white
suffrage even. No application was made by any of those states
of this supposed Jacobin principle at that time to remove these
inequalities of franchise. Were these men so nearly idiotic as
to propound an assertion in which they were so glaringly re-
futed by their own actions at home ?

The extreme claim of equality is false and iniquitous. For
out of the wide natural diversities of sex, of powers, and of char-
acter, must arise a wide difference of natural relations between
individiials and the state. To attempt to bestow identical fran-
chise upon all thus appears to be unjust, and indeed impossible.
It is but a mockery to say that we have bestowed a given fran-
chise upon a person whom nature has disqualified from using it.
It is equally futile to boast that we lift all men to the same
identical relations, when their natural differences have inexora-
bly imposed on them other relations. Of what avail would it be
to declare that all women have the same natural right with my-
self to wear a beard and to sing bass, when nature has decided
that they shall not ? What is the use of legislating that all lazy
fools shall acquire and preserve the same wealth with the dili-
gent, wise men ? The law of the universe ordains that they shall
not. I urge further, that the attempt to confer upon all the
same franchises, to which the wise and virtuous are competent,
upon the foolish and morally incompetent, is not only foolish
and impossible, but is a positive and flagrant injustice to all the
worthier citizens ; for when these unsuitable powers are abused
by the unworthy all suffer together. The little children of ray
family have not an equal right with their parents to handle loaded
revolvers and lucifer matches. If we were so foolish as to con-
cede it, the sure result would be, that they would kill each other,
and burn down the dwelling over their own and their parents'
heads. So it is not equal justice to clothe the unfitted members
of society with powers which they will be sure to misuse to the
ruin of themselves and their better fellows under the pretense
of equal rights. Such pretended equality is in fact the most
outrageous.

I argue again, that the Jacobin doctrine leads by logical con-

B16 CIVIC ETHICS.

sequence to female suifrage and "woman's rights." The wo-
man is an adult, not disfranchised bj conviction of crime. Then,
by what argument can these theorists deny to her the right of
suffrage, or any other civic right enjoyed hx males? By what
argument can they require her to submit for life to the domestic
authority of a male, her absolute equal, in order to enter mar-
riage ? Especially have American Jacobins armed this logic
with resistless force against themselves by bestowing universal
Suffrage on negroes. By what plea can the right of suffrage be
withheld from the millions of white American women, intelligent,
educated, virtuous and patriotic, after it has been granted as an
inalienable natural right to all these illiterate semi-savage aliens?
In the point of this argument there lies a fiery heat which must
sooner or later burn its way through all sophistries and plausi-
bilities, unless the American people can be made to unlearn the
fatal premise. But the concession of all equal rights to women
means simply the destruction of the family, which is the corner-
stone of the commonwealth and civilization. Will permanent
marriage continue after it becomes always possible that every
man's political "enemies may be those of his own household ?"^
Further, the moral discipline of children becomes impossible
when there are two equal heads claiming all the same preroga-
tives, unless those heads are morally perfect and infallible.
"What will be the character of those children reared under a gov-
ernment where, when a father says I shall punish, the mother
has an equal right to say, you shall not? Once more, I have
shown at a previous place, that if marriage is reduced to a sec-
ular co-partnership of equals, the principles of equity will com-
pel this result, that it shall be terminable upon the plea of either-
party. This theory thus destroys the family and reduces the re-
lations of the sexes to concubinage, when carried to its logical
results. Facts confirm these reasonings. Such were its fruits in
Jacobin France, and in those Swiss, Italian and German cities
which adopted the revolutionary j^hilosophy.

But among the inalienable natural rights of all are these:
privilege to pursue and attain one's rational and equitable end,
virtue, and that grade of well-being appropriate to the social po-
sition of each for time and eternity; and for adults, liberty of
thought, inquiry and belief, so far as human compulsion goes.

CIVIC ETHICS. 317

The former is an inalienable right, because it attaches to the boon
of existence, which is God's gift. Hence all restraints or insti-
tutions of ci\dl society which causelessly prevent this are un-
righteous. But even the title to existence must give place to
the commonwealth's right of self-preservation ; as when she calls
upon even her innocent citizens to die in her defence from in-
vasion; or when she restrains capital crimes bj inflicting the
death penalty. "The greater includes the less." Hence the
same principle justifies the commonwealth in restricting the
lesser rights when the safety of the whole reqiiires it. The right
of free thought is inalienable, because belief is the legitimate,
and ought to be the unavoidable result of sufficient evidence ;
whence I infer that it cannot be obstructed by violence without
"traversing the rights of nature. Second, responsibihty to God
(as we shall prove in the proper place) is unavoidable, and can-
not be evaded. Hence the iniquity of intruding another au-
thority over thought between the individual and God, when
the intruder is unable to take his penalty for wrong behef off
his shovilders. Third, no human government, either in church
or state, is infallible. Rome professes to meet this objection by
claiming that she is infallible. She is consistent ; more so than
a persecuting Protestant. Hence the conclusion, that civil gov-
ernment has no right to interfere with thought, however erro-
neous, until it intrudes itself in acts "violative of proper statutes.
For instance, the state refrains from meddling with the Mor-
mon's polygamous opinion, not because he has a right to such
opinions; he commits an error and a sin in entertaining them;
but this sin is against another jurisdiction than the state's, that
of God. If he puts it into practice, he is righteously prosecuted
for bigamy, a felony. But suppose the statute is immoral, re-
quiring of the citizen an act or an omission properly sin ? How
shaU a free conscience act ? I answer, it asserts its higher law
by refusing to be accessory to the sin. If the conscientious cit-
izen holds a salaried office, one of whose functions is to assist
in executing such sinful laws, he must resign his office and its
emoluments. To retain its powers and emoluments while still
refusing to perform its tasks on plea of conscience, is hypocrisy
and dishonesty. Ha\ing thus resigned his executive office and
its salary, the citizen is clear of the sin involved in the evil law;

318 CIYIC ETHICS.

except that he, like all other private citizens, has the right to
argue and vote for its amendment. But if this sinful act is ex-
acted by the state from its citizens, not as its executive officers
but as its private subjects, he must refuse to obey, and then sub-
mit, without violent resistance, to whatever penalty the state in-
flicts for his disobedience, resorting only to moral remonstrance
against it. The latter part of my precept may appear at first
glance inconsistent with my doctrine of freedom of conscience.
Ardent minds may exclaim, if it is righteous in us to refuse com-
plicity in the acts which the state wickedly commands, then it is
wicked in the state to punish us for that righteous refusal, whence
we infer that the same sacred liberty which authorized us to re-
fuse compliance should equally authorize us to resist the second
wrong, the unjust penalty. I reply, that if civil government had
no better basis than the pretended social contract, this heady
argument woidd be perfectly good. It is equally obvious that
it would lead directly to anarchy ; for the right of resisting pen-
alties which the private citizen judged iniquitous must, on these
premises, rest exclusively upon his sovereign opinion. The state
could not go behind the professed verdict of his conscience ; for
upon this theory the disobedient citizen's private judgment
must be final, else his liberty of thought Avould be gone. But
now, I remind these overweening reasoners that anarchy is more
expressly forbidden to them by the will of God than unjust
punishment of indiA-iduals is forbidden to magistrates ; that an-
archy is a far greater evil than the unjust punishment of indi-
viduals, because this universal disorder strips away all defence
against similar unjust wrongs, both from themselves and their
fellow-citizens. Or my argument may be jDut thus : My right
to refuse obedience to a civil law only extends to the cases
where compliance is positive sin j?dr se. But my submission, for
a conscientious reason, to a penalty which I judge undeserved,
is not my sin per se : my suflferings under it are the sin of the
erroneous rulers. Hence, while I mxist refuse to make myself
an accomplice in a positive sin, I submit peaceably to the pen-
alty attached to such refusal. Thus, when " the noble army of
martyrs " were required by the pagan magistrates to worship
idols, they utterly refused. The act was sin per se. But when
they were required to lose goods, liberty or Hfe, as the penalty

CIVIC ETHICS. 319

of their refusal, they submitted ; because these losses, volunta-
rily incurred in a good cause, were not sin per se in them, how-
ever evil on the part of the exactors. Even Socrates, though a
pagan, saw this argument so clearly that when means of escape
to Maegara from an unjust death sentence were provided for
him, he refused to avail himself of the escaj)e, and remained to
drink the hemlock. [See Plato's Phcedo). Thus judged the
holy apostles and the Christian mai-tyrs of all ages.

It may be asked now, if the individual righteous citizen may
not forcibly resist the injustice of the state, how can that aggre-
gate of citizens, which is only made up of individuals, resist it?
Does not this refute the right of revolution against even the
most usurping and tyrannical government ? That right is cor-
rectly argued against Legitimatists from these premises : First,
that the will of God, as revealed by nature and Sacred Script-
ure, does not make a particular form of government obligatory,
but some form ; the rule for the individual being that the de
facto government is authoritative, be it of one kind or another.
Hence the sin of rebeUion does not consist in changing the
form, but in resisting the government as government. Second,
that as between rulers and ruled, the power is delegated from
the latter to the former. Rulers exist for the behoof of the
ruled, not the reverse. Whence it follows that to make a crime
of the ruled (the masters) changing their rulers involves the
same absurdity as making the parent rebel against his own
child. Third, that hence there must be in the ruled the right
to revolutionize, if the government has become so perverted, on
the whole, as to destroy the ends for which government is insti-
tuted. This right must exist in the ruled, if anywhere, because
providence does not work relief without means, and the right-
eous means cannot be found in external force, according to the
law of nations. The divine right of kings is no more sacred
than that of constables.

But the difficulty recurs, if it is the duty of each individual
citizen to submit to the government's wrongs on him, how can
the injured body of citizens ever start the resistance without
sin? Since the existing offices of the state are in the hands of
the oppressors, of course the initial action of resistance must be
private and unofficial. Even grant that when once a " commit-

320 CIVIC ETHICS.

tee of public safety " lias been organized tliat may be fairly con-
sidered as clothed with delegated and official power, the getting
it arranged must be unofficial, private action. All this is true,
and it gives us the clue to find the dividing path between un-
warrantable individual resistance and righteous revolution. If
the outraged citizen is moved to resist merely by his own pri-
vate wrong, he is sinful. If his resistance is disinterested, and
the expression of the common breast outraged by general op-
pressions, it is patriotic and righteous. There is the dividing
line. It is common to say ^vith Paley, that, to justify forcible
revolution, the evils the body of the citizens are suffering under
the usurpations of the existing government must be manifestly
greater, on the whole, than the evils which unavoidably accom-
pany the revolution. This seems correct. And that there must
be, second, a reasonably good and hopeful prospect of success.
This I dissent from. Some of the most righteous and noble re-
volutions would never have begun on such a calculation of chance
of success. They were rather the generous outburst of despair.
Such was the resistance of the Maccabees against the Syrian
domination. Such was the rising of the S^^ss against the house
of Hapsburg. But these were two of the most beneficial revolu-
tions in history.

An all important corollary of the liberty of thought is, that
neither church nor state has a right to persecute for opinion's
sake. A part of the argument may be seen above. It may be
supposed that this is too universally held to need any argument.
I answer, it is held, but very much on unintelligent and sophisti-
cal grounds ; so that its advocates, however confident and pas-
sionate, would be easily " dum-founded " by a perspicacious
ojoponent. The history of human rights is, that their intelhgent
assertors usually learn the true grounds of them " in the furnace
of affliction"; that the posterity who inherit these rights hold
them for a while in pride and ignorant prescription ; when the true
logic of the rights has been forgotten, and when some plausible
temptation jiresses so to do, the next generation discards the
precious rights bodily and goes back to the practice of the old
tvranny. Such has been the history, precisely, of confederated
rights in the United States. The present popular theory of the
United States' Constitution is exactly that theory of consoHdated

CIVIC ETHICS. 321

imperialism wliicli that constitution was created to oppose ; and
whicli our wise forefathers fought the Eevohitionary War to
throw off. You may deem it a strange prophecy, but I pre-
dict that the time will come in this once free America, when
the battle for religious Uberty will have to be fought over again,
and will probably be lost, because the people are already igno-
rant of its true basis and condition. As to the latter, for in-
stance, the whole drift of the legislation and judicial decisions
touching the property of ecclesiastical corporations, is tending
like a broad and mighty stream to that result which destroyed
the spiritual liberty of Europe in the middle ages, and which
"the men of 1776" knew perfectly well would prove destructive
of it again. But the statesman who now should propose to
stay this legislation woidd be overwhelmed by a howl from
nearly all the Protestant Christians of America.

In arguing men's responsibility for their moral opinions,
we saw and refuted the erroneous grounds on which many
advocates of freedom claim it. I showed you that upon their
ground our right of freedom was betrayed to the advocates of
persecution. For these succeed in pro^dng beyond reply that
men are responsible for their beliefs, and then add the inference
that, since eiToneous beliefs are mischievous, the errorist should
be responsible to the penalties of the civil magistrate. When
we object by pointing to the horror of mediaeval persecutions,
they reply, that these admitted excesses no more disprove the
right of magistrates to punish error wisely and moderately than
the Draconian Code of Britain, which punished sheep-steaHng
with death, proves that theft should not be punished at all.
The only way to refute these adroit statements is to resort to a
truth which Radicals and Liberals are most prone to forget, that
the state is not ro -dv of social organization, but is hmited by
God and natiu'e to the regulation of one segment of social rights
and duties ; while the others are reserved to the family, the
church and to God. It is well again to repeat, that while the
citizen is responsible for erroneous behefs, his penal responsi-
bility therefor is to God alone. The wickedness of human in-
trusion here is further shown by the following considerations :
No human organization can justly usurp the individual's re-
sponsibility to God, for his powers of thought and will, because

Vol. UI.— 21.

322 CIYIC ETHICS,

no liuman organization can substitnte itself under tlie indi-
vidual's guilt and penalty if he is made to think or feel crimi-
nally. Now, this is more especially true of the state than even
of the organized church. Because the state in its nature is
not even ecclesiastical, much less a spiritual institute; being
ordained of nature simply to reahze secular (yet moral) order.
Orthodoxy or spirituality are not qualifications requisite for its
magistrates, according to the laAv of nature, but only secular
virtue and intelligence. Witness the fact, that the rule of
Mohammedan magistrates is morally valid in Turkey, and of
pagan in China. And the magistrates to whom Eomans xiii.
enjoined allegiance were pagan and anti-christian. Now, how
absurd that I should be required to devolve my spiritual per-
sonal functions and responsibihty on an institute utterly non-
spiritual in its nature and functions, or even anti-spiritual ! And
how practically absurd, that institutes which are disagreeing (as
to rehgion) and contrary to each other and the tiiith, throughout
most of the world, should be selected as defenders of that truth
which not one of them maj hold.

Again, if the fallibihty and incompetency of the state for this
task be waived, persecution for misbehef , by either church or state,
is wicked, because it is not only a means utterly irrelevant to pro-
duce the professed good in view, right belief, but has a violent
and mischievous tendency to defeat it, and hence is criminally
impolitic. Thus, first, a right belief must be spontaneous ; force
is a compulsory measure. It is as though one should whip a sad
child to make him glad. His sadness may be sinful, but a pun-
ishment which he feels unjust will certainly not help matters.
Second, it is so natural as to be unavoidable, that a creed must
be more or less associated in men's minds with apprehension of
its supporters. True, a cruel man may by chance be the pro-
fessed advocate of a right creed. None the less do I associate
creed and its advocate and infer that if the advocates are wicked,
the creed is wicked. What, then, is the insanity of trying to
make me love the creed from which I had dissented, by giving
me most pungent motives to hate its advocates? So history
teaches that persecution for mere opinion's sake, unless annihilat-
ing, as of the Lutherans in Spain, only makes the persecuting
creed odious, and the j)ersecuted one popular. Thus the perse-

CIVIC ETHICS. 323

cuting of the Scotch Covenanters by the prelatist made prelacy
odious to the Scotch nations for two centuries. The brief per-
secution practiced against the Immersionsts by the colonial gov-
ernment of Virginia, has made that creed popular ever since in
the old counties of the state. Third, persecuting helps the error
persecuted by arraying on its side the noblest sympathies of
human nature, sympathy with weakness and suffering, and moral
indignation at injustice. Fourth, persecution, if practiced at all
extensively, is frightfully demoralizing ; first, by confounding
faidts, which, if faults at all, are lesser ones, with the most enor-
mous in the criminal code. A sincere mistake about a mysteri-
ous doctrine is punished more severely than rape and murder.
Secondly, by always using and rewarding, as it must, the
vilest and foulest of the community as its delators and tools,
thus putting the rascality of the community in place of honor.
It breeds hypocrisy wholesale ; professing to punish a mistake
in theologizing severely in the person, perhaps, of a very pure
and benevolent woman or old man, while the current sins of
cursing, drinking, lust and others, go rampant. Eras of persecu-
tion have always been eras of foul and flagrant moral laxity.
Last, persecuting, if not annihilating, alw^ays inflames religious
dissensions and multiplies sects. If annihilating, it produces, as
in Italy, France, and Spain of the eighteenth century, a dead
stagnation of infidelity under the mask of orthodox uniformity.

The American constitutions now all deny to the states the
right to establish or endow any form of religion, true or false.
That right, almost universally believed in out of America, until
our generation, by all statesmen of all creeds, was argued from
two different points of view. One, which I may call the high pre-
latic (as in Gladstone's Church and State), makes the state the
ro -av of human aggi'egation, charged with all associated func-
tions W'hereby man is advantaged for time and eternity; teaches
that this omnibus organ, state, is moral and spiritual ; has a con-
science ; is, as an organism, responsible to God for propagating
his true religion, as w^ell as Christian morals, just as much as the
two other institutes of God and nature, the family and the church.
Hence it is obligatory that the state shall herself profess a re-
ligion, and that a true one, through her chief magistrates; shall
apply a rehgious test-oath to all her officers, judges and legis-

324 CIVIC ETHICS.

lators ; and shall actively support and propagate the true reli-
gion through the ministry, through the orthodox church. This
extreme theory is refuted thus : If it is to do all this, why not
persecute also? Let the student consider the question. The
state is not by its nature either a spiritual or ecclesiastical in-
stitution, but a secular one. The same argument would prove
that every gas company or telephone company was bound to
profess a company religion, have a test-oath, evangehze its em-
ployees and patrons. The second, more modern, theory, advo-
cated by Bishop 3\^arburton, Dr. Chalmers, Macaulay, Patrick
Henry and such men, argues thus : They repudiate the (absurd)
prelatic theory of the state, and hold that it is only a secular
organization, appointed by God and nature to realize secular
order. 1. But, by the reason that it is entitled to exist, it is
entitled to use all means essential to its existence and fulfilment
of its natural ends. This is granted. 2. They proceed to say
that popular morality is essential to its existence and fulfilment
of its natural ends. 3. There is no adequate basis for popular
morality, except the prevalence of some form or forms of rea-
sonably orthodox, evangelical Christianity. 4. But experience
shows that no voluntary denomination of Christians can suc-
ceed in sufficiently evangelizing the masses without state aid.
Hence the conclusion that it is the state's right and duty to se-
lect some one or more denominations of Christians reasonably
orthodox, evangelical, and pure, and endow and aid them to
evangelize every district and the whole population.

This theory is much more plausible and decent. No experi-
enced man contests either of the first three propositions. We
contest the fourth, and also argue crushing difliculties in the
way of the state's reaching the desired end in the way of church
establishment. Experience shows that free and voluntary effort
of the denominations, all wisely and equitabl}' protected by the
government, but left independent, will come nearer evangelizing
the whole society than any other plan. The United States is
the best example. For when we consider the rapid growth of
its population, we see that the voluntary efforts of the denomi-
nations have done relatively more than any churches enjoying
state aid in other lands.

The following arguments are to be added against the more

CIVIC ETHICS. 325

moderate theory we are discussing ; they apply a fortiori against
the higher prelatic theory. That the state's patronage will be
benumbing. For, since the state is and must be a secular insti-
tute, its individual magistrates are likely to be anti-evangelical.
" The natural man receiveth not the things of God, for they are
spiritually discerned." " The carnal mind is enmity against
God." These earthly rulers must therefore be expected to
patronize the least evangelical ministers and denominations;
and the office-seeking temper will debauch the ministry, just as
it does the other office-seekers. Again, since the state pays the
salaries of the preachers, the duty to the tax-payers will not only
justify, but demand its supervision of the functions paid for,
either by claiming the appointing power over pastors, or in some
other appropriate way that shall be efficient. Then how shall
the endowed church maintain its spiritual independence or its
allegiance to King Christ ? This was strikingly illustrated in
Scotland in the colHsions of the Free Church with the govern-
ment in 1843. The British government claimed for secular
patrons the "right of advowson," (or right to nominate a minis-
ter to a parish). Dr. Chalmers claimed that the ordination, in-
stallation, and discipline of ministers were spiritual functions of
the church, over which she could recognize no control whatever
except that of her divine Head. But the government rejoined
that this secular control over the religious teachers was the just
corollary from the support which the secular government fur-
nished to them. Dr. Chalmers' party attempted to evade this
argument by a distinction. They admitted that secular aid must
justify a certain secular control over religious functionaries, quo-
ad temporalia, but not quoad sacra; as to these the authority
of the church under Christ must be exclusive and supreme.
The government replied in substance that the distinction was
impracticable; when the tenvporale, for instance, was a manse,
endowment or a monied salary furnished by the commonwealth
as her compensation for a certain religious teaching, it was im-
possible for her to exercise the control over her money, without
also exercising a virtual control over the function for which the
money was paid. Dr. Chalmers' distinction appeared as vain
as though a plaintiff in a civil court, who had sold a horse, the
health of which he warranted, and who was now sued for the

326 CIYIC ETHICS.

purchase-monev, should raise this plea : that while he admitted
the jnrisdictiou of the court over the money, he should deny its
competency to decide upon the health of the horse, on the
ground that it was a court of law, and not a veterinary surgeon.
The court would answer that its jurisdiction over the purchase-
money must inevitably involve its right to judge the horse's
health; jimsdiction over the quid must carry jurisdiction over
the ^_;;'o quo. I conceive that, against Dr. Chalmers, who still
asserted the duty of the state to endow the church, this reply
was conclusive. The wildest form of state establishment miist
logically result in some partition between the state and chiu'ch
of that spiritual government which Dr. Chalmers rightly taught
belongs exclusively to the church under the laws of the Lord
Jesus Christ. And this suggests, finally, that an}^ state estab-
lishment of religion must tend to evolve Erastian influences
as to church discipline of private members also ; see this pow-
erfully confirmed by the difficulties of Calvin in Geneva. For,
will not the unchristian citizen say that this pastor is a public
servant? How, then, can he convict his o^m master for acts
not prohibited by the state, his employer? The consequence
is logical, that since the religious functionaries are but a part
of the state's administration, magistrates alone should have the
censorship of manners and morals, unless they are to surrender
that whole function to the clergy. But the latter would be ab-
surd and impossible. If the magistrates are not entitled to
correct the crimes and misdemeanors of the people, there is
nothing to which they are reasonably entitled. If, now, another
censorship of manners and morals is allowed the clergy, the
citizens are subjected to an imjperium in hnperio, to double and
competing authorities. Where, then, will be their rights or
liberty?

The Protestant Reformers did not at first evolve the doctrine
of religious Hberty or separation of church and state. The
former was taught by Milton and John Owen, and the latter by
Jefferson and Madison. Virginia was the first commonwealth
in the world which, having sovereign power to do otherwise,
established full religious liberty instead of toleration, Avdth inde-
pendence of church and state, and which j^laced the stamp of
crime upon the African slave trade. The latter law she enacted

CIVIC ETHICS. 327

in October, 1778, in the midst of tlie throes of a defensive war,
thirty years before it was done by the Government of the United
States, and forty years before the overpraised and tardy action
of Great Britain.

From the view we have given of the basis of the common-
wealth and of rights under it, it is obvious, that the right of
suffrage and ehgibility to office is not an inahenable natural
franchise, but a function of responsibihty entrusted to suitable
classes of citizens as a trust. The opposite theory, which claims
suffrage as an inahenable right, is inconsistent, in that it does
not extend the claim to women, and either extend it to aliens
also, or else refrain from all jurisdiction over them and their
property. That claim is founded on the social contract theory,
by implication, and so falls when it is refuted. That theory
represents man as absolutely free from all obligation to govern-
ment, save as he comes under it by his optional assent to the
social contract. It is supposed that this assent is only given by
suffrage. Hence, it is argued, no man owes any allegiance ex-
cept he be clothed with the right of suffrage. But we have seen
that God and nature bring men under the moral obhgation of
allegiance, and not their own optional assent. Hence the duty
of allegiance does not imply the right of suffrage. The ex-
tremest Jacobins do not deem it right to extend suffrage to
minors. Why not? The answer must be, because they lack
the knowledge and experience to exercise it safely. They are
human beings ; it would be absurd to disfranchise them merely
because they are of a certain age. The argument must be, that
this immature age is the sign of their disqualification for the
function. Now, if a class of persons, over twenty-one years of
age, are marked by a similar incompetency, why should not the
same exclusion be applied to them? To give the incompetent
a power which they will abuse to their own injury, and the in-
jury of their fellow-citizens, is not an act of right, but of injus-
tice. That claim leads to unreasonable and self-destructive
results ; for should it be that a class of citizens in the common-
wealth are of such a low grade of intelligence and virtue (yet
not in the class of condemned felons) as to use their suffrage to
destroy their fellow-citizens' right and their own, reason, says
the commonwealth, is entitled to self-preservation by disfran-

328 CIVLC ETHICS.

cliising them of that power. One of the maxims of the Whigs
of 1776 was: "That all just taxation shovJd be accompanied
with representation," They meant that a commonwealth or
2?opulus must be somehow fairly represented in the parhament
•which taxes them, or else there is injustice. Modern democracy
claims that it is true of individuals. Certainly those great men
did not mean it thus. The historical proofs are, that in that
Sense the maxim is preposterous. For, first, then no females,
however rich, could pay a cent of taxes unless they voted ; nor
wealthy minors; nor, second, ahens holding much property
protected by the commonwealth. And, last, since even Jaco-
binism does not propose to have babies, idiots and lunatics
vote, all their property must remain untaxed. As the moral
duty of allegiance does not spring out of the individual consent,
but is original and natural, so the duty of paying taxes, which
is one branch of allegiance, does not arise thence. This, of
course, does not imply that a government has a moral right to
tax an unprotected class of citizens unequitably. And for equi-
table protection of the taxed against their own rulers clothed
with the taxing power, it is enough that the taxed be repre-
sented in the law-making department by enough of the classes
who pay taxes, to make their just will potentially heard. And
experience proves that to clothe all, including those who have no
property, with suffrage, leaves property practically iinprotected.

THE PHILOSOPHY REGULATING PRIVATE
CORPORATIONS.

THERE is a discriminating conservatism, wliicli values and
seeks to preserve tlie principle of old institutions, and which,
understands the conditions of their value. It seeks to save the
kernel even at the expense of the shell. There is also an unthink-
ing conservatism, which, by a bhnd association of ideas, cleaves
to the form of institutions once valuable, overlooking the condi-
tions of their utility, and the principles which remain stable
under changing forms, or even demands mutations of form in
order to remain stable. This conservatism seeks to keep the
shell at the expense of the kernel. Such is often the temper
which moves the American people to regard industrial combina-
tions with excessive legislative favor. There was once a histori-
cal reason, which made the right of incorporating precious to
the free people of Europe. We still feel the former fondness
for it, after the state of affairs in which that reason was grounded
has been totally reversed.

After the fall of the Roman Empire before the Teutonic in-
vasions, Western Europe was for a time a chaos, " without form
and void," presenting no distinctive social order or settled
rights. At length, out of the disastrous confusion, the feudal
system was seen to emerge. Its main feature was the holding
of lands for stipulated military services to the landlord or suze-
rain, by tenants for life, without a fee-simple title. The tie
which thus connected the lord and the vassal was almost the
only remaining bond of rights or social obligations. The other
essential feature of feudalism was, that the owTiership of the
lands also carried to the suzerain the right of government over
its inhabitants, and made him not only a landlord, but a ruler.
Each barony was a military commonwealth, exercising the rights
of administering justice within itself, and of waging war on its
neighbors, and irresponsible, even to the king, except for its

329

330 THE PHILOSOPHY REGULATING PRIVATE CORPORATIONS.

stipulated military obligations and aids. For the vassal, there
might be rights and franchises, guaranteed to him by the charter
of his fief, and protected bv the mailed hand of his lord. But
for persons not belonging to the military caste, for artisans and
traders, there ^vas no right, and no protection. The tillers of the
soil were either slaves or sei-fs adscr'qjti fjhhce. The inhabitants
of the towns were liable to be plundered at will by the neigh-
boring feudal chieftains.

In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the industrial classes in
towns began to find this expedient : Sometimes by payment of
money, sometimes by some timely service, sometimes by their
own sturdy right arms, they extracted from their lords charters
of incorporation, virtually giving them an organic existence, and
guaranteeing some of their rights. Kings perceiving in these
corporations probable counterpoises to the power of the great
feudatories, found their interest in proposing themselves as their
patrons and umpires. Chief magistrates of nations thus found
in these industrial communities agents by whose help they were
able to create out of the endless strifes of feudalism a national
order. The biu'ghs, enfranchised by these charters, became
the strongholds of the commonalty, and the fountains of popu-
lar opinions. Industry, protected in them by a republican mu-
nicipal government, created wealth, comfort, and civilization.
Thinking men recognized in them the saviours of popular rights,
as well as the fountains of manufacturing and commercial wealth.
They became essential factors in the creation of modern consti-
tutional freedom. It is, then, not strange that these corpora-
tions were cherished as precious and admirable, and that their
protection was sought for every species of interest against feudal
violence. Each trade in the to^\-ns was organized into a guild,
governed within itself by strict by-laws, and guarding its com-
mon privileges by the stipulations of a chai-ter. Just as in the
military caste, ever}- teniu'e of land had before assumed the form
of a fief ; so, among the industrial classes, every franchise en-
deavored to gain the sanction of corporate rights. It is not sur-
prising that generations of the commonalty grew iip accustomed
to think the usage of incorporation the very bulwark of freedom
and source of prosperity.

But this favor for incorporating business enterprises has sur-

THE PHILOSOPHY REGULATESTG PEIYATE CORPOKATIONS. 331

Tived among us, in full force, after every condition of society
A\'liieli justified the practice lias passed away. The feudal insti-
tutions were aristocratic ; they divided society by rigid and
arbitrary castes. The power of the feudal lord was a one-man-
power, and it recognized no restrictions save those of existing
charters. The commoner, if he met the baron single-handed,
and outside of chartered protection, was absolutely at his mercy.
The only hope of the commonalty was in combination, in the
union of many weak hands into one corporation. But now, all
this is totally changed. Feudalism has been dead in America
for more than a century. All men are now legal equals, and
each is a sovereign. The chief magistrate, in enforcing the law,
acts directly upon individuals, and no longer upon fiefs. The
law is in theory supreme, and every man is equal before it.
The commonwealth itself is the all-comprehending guild, whose
charter, the constitution of the state, should abundantly pro-
tect every citizen, whatever his interest or pursuit. Incorpora-
tion, once the only expedient of the weak as against the strong, is
now too often the partial and usurping artifice of equals against
their fellows — of the strong against the weak. Yet, after the
whole ground for the prejudice and the usage has been reversed,
they still continue in full force. Thus, out of this mediaeval
expedient of the commonalty is now rapidly growing a new aris-
tocracy, armed by law with class-privileges and powers more
odious than the feudal. Such is the blind conservatism which
saves the shell Mobile it loses the kei*nel.

A corporation is an artificial person, created by the law,
usually of many individuals, and clothed by its charter with cer-
tain rights of personality, and with a continuity of existence
outlasting the natural life of each of its members. Judge Mar-
shall defined it as "an artificial being, invisible, intangible, and
existing only in contemplation of law." "A public corporation"
is one which, like the municipal government of a town, is created
for political functions. A "private corporation" is organized
by the law, perhaps of many indi\dduals, and yet mainly to pur-
sue some end of personal gain belonging immediately to the
members alone. Public corporations are essential to the execu-
tion in detail of the functions of justice and government; and
although they may operate each one directly on but a part of

332 THE PHILOSOPHY REGULATING PRIVATE CORPORATIONS.

the citizens, yet tliey exist for the common purposes of all the
people. Against them I have no word of caution or objection
to utter. The thoughts which I propose to unfold are aimed
only at private corporations, and only at the unnecessary crea-
tion of these.

There are only two cases under a republican constitution
which offer any fair jaretext for erecting private corporations
with special privileges not common to all the citizens. One is
that in which the work proposed requires more wealth than any
one citizen or copartnership possesses. One man may not be
found rich enough to build a long railroad. Yet such a road may
be productive of wealth. The other case is that in which the en-
terprise, in order to be useful, must be continued under the same
management longer than the lifetime of any citizen. Hence, it
is argued, the law must create the artificial person, which col-
lects into one treasury the wealth of many members, and which
does not die when its projectors die, to carry through and per-
petuate this costly and enduring work. The only other alterna-
tive, it is said, would be for the state to conduct all such enter-
prises herself, by the agency of multitudes of her officials, and
thus to make herself at once the civil government and the uni-
versal business corporation. But the commonwealth which
should undertake this, in a high material civihzation, would be-
come so all-engrossing as to be a gigantic tyranny to the citizens.
It would, indeed, be clear of the error of conferring on associa-
tions of a part of the citizens' class-privileges ; but this would be
at the cost of engrossing to itself dangerous powers from all the
citizens. The aggregate of functions thus thrown upon the gov-
ernment would be too heavy and multifarious for anything short
of omniscience ; and the aggregate of power and money would
be too formidable to be entrusted to any hand but that of im-
mutable rectitude. The huge machine would jjresent oppor-
tunities for boundless mismanagement and peculation. The
plan would convert a free government into a Chinese "pater-
nal" despotism.

But if we concede these arguments, there is no reason why
private corporations should be causelessly multiiDlied. At least,
their privileges should be jealoiisly limited to suitable cases;
they should be made to resemble, as nearly as may be, business

THE PHILOSOPHY REGULATIXG PEITATE CORPORATIONS. 333

copartnersliips ; and tliey slioukl have no privileges different
from those belonging to ever}^ citizen, save sucli as conduce to
the pnbhc and general advantage.

TTe have now touched the prime motive for seeking corporate
powers. Business men contemplating any industrial entei-prise
do not desire to bear the responsibilities of business copartner-
ships. According to the good old law of copartnerships, the
partners were not only jointly, but severally, bound for all the
debts of the firm. The creditors of the firm could not only ex-
haust the definite siims contributed to the firm by the partners,
but could pursue the sejjarate j)riyate estate of each partner un-
til their debts were satisfied. Either partner, in signing the
firm-name to an obUgation, bound the firm and its other mem-
bers. It is precisely these responsibilities which the petition-
ers for private corporations seek to evade. And the sophistical
plea they advance for asking this immunity is, that the foresight
of such a sweeping risk deters business men from useful adven-
tures; that the commonwealth, as a whole, is interested in en-
couraging an active spirit of adventure, because the successful
opening out of new industries will add to the common riches ;
that hence the laws should encourage adventure by giying j)i*i-
vate incorporation, which will enable business men to make the
experiment by risking only their specified capital stock.

My position is, that this specious plea is vhulhj unsound, at
least for existing American society. The spirit of industrial ad-
yenture does not need stimulus among us, but it needs prudent
repression. The temper of our people is ah-eady over-adven-
turous. We are perfectly sure that every j)ossible new ad-
yentui'e, j)romising increase of private or common wealth, will
find men to pursue it vigorously; the private motives of ambi-
tion, love of excitement and desire of gain, ensure this. Does
not experience testify that too many adventures are made, in
experiments too uncertain and of too little reasonable promise,
either of private or pubHc reward? I repeat, no stimiilus is
called for in our day.

But all these industrial adventurers pursue these experiments,
reasonably hopeful or foolishly rash, for their own private be-
hoof. This is all they think of. The other vital fact in the
question is, that the experiment inevitahly costs inoney, some-

334 THE PHILOSOPHY REGULATING PEIVATE COEPORATIONS.

body's money, and usually a great deal of it. The money it lias
cost is actually consumed, and somebody is inexorably compelled
to " j)ay the piper." Is there a mine to be developed, supposed
to promise much wealth ? Is a j)rivate corporation created to
do it, consisting of ten members, each of whom only puts in as
capital stock one thousand dollars ? But by the adroit use of
their credit they get the control of labor and other values to
the amount of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, which
are all sunk in useless shafts and tunnels, and then the honor-
able corporators, after paying all the corjyorat'ion, has ten thou-
sand dollars of debt, wipe their mouths and announce the mine
a total failure, and dissolve their corporate body into thin air.
But now, values to the amount of one hundred and forty thou-
sand dollars have been irrevocably consumed. Whose? The
labor of honest working men ; the timber, forage, and provisions
of the neighboring farmers; the little patrimonies of orphans
and widows, lent to the corporation as a safe investment on rash
representations. These are the people who are made to pay the
cost of the rash experiment, while the responsible experimenters
go nearly free and retain all their private wealth, and while the
honest losers would not have been allowed a mite of the direct
profits of the minerals had the barren veins proved rich in
them. This is a flagrant natural injusticG. The men who de-
vised the experiment for their own private advantage, who were
guilty of the mismanagement, and who made the mistakes, these
are the men who are justly bound to bear the whole risks and
losses of these mistakes. The only shomng of a j)retext which
saves the transaction from the just charge of robbery, is that
such experiments on the whole redound to the common advan-
tage and wealth, and that therefore the adventurers should be
relieved of a part of their risk. But I have shown this assump-
tion erroneous. The community is not interested to have such
spirit of enterprise stimulated in this form. The measure does
not result in the increase, but in the destruction of private and
public wealth. It is these wasteful and costly experiments, un-
wisely and rashly made, because consciously made at other peo-
ple's expense, which are devouring a large part of the honest
and solid increase of wealth made by regular industries, and
thus are retarding the progress of society.

THE PHILOSOPHY REGUIATING PEIYATE CORPORATIONS. 335

Again : this sophistical pretext has only a showing of a fair
appHcation to business enterprises which are novel and untried.
As to all the knowni and approved lines of industry, men ought
to be able to know the reasonable expectations of risk and gain ;
and, if they attempt them, to do so with as good knowledge of
the prospect of gain, as their other fellow-citizens have in their
industries. If a man is personally ignorant of such estabUshed
and known industry, what right has he to migrate into it?
"What right to demand that he shall be empowered to indulge
his impertinence in assuming a business he does not understand,
and has not fitted himself for, at his neighbor's expense ? Here
is a man who knows how to make shoes, and understands the
risks, and the ways by which honest, moderate profits are made
from leather. But his ambition, avarice, or laziness moves him
to attem]Dt woolen manufacture, of which he knows nothing, and
which he has not taken the pains to learn. As a corporator, he
can " play gentleman," instead of sticking to an honest last. So
the law equips him with a private corporation, to enable him to
make this experiment of playing gentleman at others' expense [
I repeat : it is only when the industrial experiment which pro-
mises general advantage is untried and novel, that any color of
pretext appears for relieving the adventurers themselves of any
part of the risk. And then, the wise and equitable way would be
for the state to pay the first adventui'ers a small hountij, taken
out of the common treasury, to aid in the cost of the first trials.
But we now see the invidious privileges of the private corpora-
tion granted for pursuing every familiar and ordinary line of
business as old as society itself.

If this ill-advised species of legislation were reformed, and all
men who wished to adventure their riches in the hope of
acquiring other riches, were made to do so under the responsi-
bihties of the old copartnership, we should see this change :
men would much more regularly stick to the callings in which
they had been reared, and in which they were qualified and enti-
tled to succeed. There would be few adventures of the absurd
and dishonest character now so common, made by men ignorant
of the business into which they intrude, at the expense of men
more honest, industrious and modest than themselves. There
would be far less over-trading. There would be far less waste

336 THE PHILOSOPHY EEGULATING PRIVATE CORPORATIONS.

of tke earnings of remunerative industry in unwise experiments.
The steady and wholesome increase of solid wealth would be
much greater.

Corporate privileges can never be common franchises, belong-
ing of right, and equally, to all citizens. They must ever re-
main of the nature of special grants; and hence, they can be
equitably bestowed on favored persons only on special grounds,
which constitute the petitioners for them in some sense excep-
tions from their fellow-citizens. The fair inference from these
truths would seem to be, that the granting of such privileges
should be the sovereign and the very careful act of the legisla-
ture alone. It should be regarded as a power too delicate and
important to be delegated. The American States, in delegating
this prerogative by some general law of incorporation, to an
inferior agency — as nearly all the states have done — may plead
that, in such action, they have merely devolved upon the lower
department the ministerial function of arranging the forms
of the corporation ; while the principles of the general corpora-
tion law sovereignly determine the nature and conditions of the
privileges allowed. So much may, however, be safely affirmed :
that these sweeping expedients for facilitating incorporation are
symptoms of an abuse of the usage by its undue and rash ex-
tension. Legislatures have seemed to think, that because their
general laws of incorporation contained no express limitations ;
because they offered equal privileges, in seeming and in word,
to any and every citizen desiring to incorporate, therefore they
were not making class-legislation; therefore they were not
chargeable with conferring special privileges on some citizens
at the expense of their feUow-citizens. This view is entirely
deceptive. No matter what equal right the law may seem to
offer to all, all men cannot actually pursue all avocations.
There must always be some branches of industry naturally un-
fitted to come under corporate management; while some are
naturally adapted to gain advantage from this form of control.
A private corporation may be extremely well suited to the man-
agement of a mammoth distillery, or woolen-factory, and utterly
unfitted to the successful rearing of poultry and pigs. It is,
therefore, a mockery to the farmer for the legislature to say
to him : " The general law of incorporation is, in its letter, as

THE PHILOSOPHY REGUIATING PEIVATE CORPOEATIONS. 337

open to you as to tlie distiller. If you wish to eujoy its privi-
leges, incorporate yoiu'selves to rear pigs." Imperious circum-
stances have made it impossible for tliem to incorporate them-
selyes successfully. Hence tlie incorporated distillers are, by
this law, empowered to pursue their industry with special privi-
leged advantages against their fellow-citizens, the farmers. This
is essential injustice, under the .guise of a nominal equality.
Again, if the shrewd men w^ho avail themselves of these cor-
porate powers do not regard them as specially advantageous,
why do they seek them, in preference to the old, fair copartner-
ship? Evidently, then, they know that the condition of their
making advantage of their corporate powers is this : that many
of their fellow-citizens shall still jDursue their industries unpro-
tected by similar corporate powers. If the system of incorpor-
ated and privileged industries could be equitably universal, it
would cease to be unfairly advantageous to anybody. If every-
body could practically enjoy the system, then these shrewd men
would cease to desire it f Or themselves. They would say : " Now
it can do us no good, because all are again on one level." Thus,
the obstinate truth still appears, that the customary legislation
for private corporations is invidious class-legislation, anti-re-
publican in tendency, however repubHcan in seeming, and
favorable to oligarchy in business, and ultimately in the state.

But these wholesome views have not prevented the states
from vying with each other in general corporation laws, which
throw wide open the gates, and make the acquisition of these
privileges as easy as possible to the classes favored by circum-
stances. In Texas, any persons combining to pursue any legiti-
mate industry may obtain corporate powers by certifying their
pretensions, their capital stock, their names and by-laws, to the
.secretary of the commonwealth, and complying with certain rules
of mere form. Thereupon it is the latter's duty, as a matter of
course, to confer on these the full powers. In Virginia, the
same law is in force, except that the official who incorporates is
the judge of the circuit (district) court. In New York, two laws
authorize the secretary of state to grant incorporation to any
and every imaginable enterprise, except banking, whenever the
petitioners certify him of the objects, duration, capital, and trus-
tees of the proposed combination.

Vol. III.— i2.

338 THE PHILOSOPHY EEGULATING PEIVATE CORPORATIONS.

Thus, instead of maintaining any wise restrictions on private
incorporations, we Lave tliem for everything, not only to build
railroads, navigate ships, operate factories, educate the young,
bury the dead ; but corporations to carry parcels on the vehicles
of these other corporations ; corporations to spin, to make our
clocks and watches, to peg shoes and to make a nail; corpora-
tions to fatten cattle on the " free grass " of other corporations ;
corporations to play Sbj^lock; corporations to print bank notes
for those other corporations ; corporations to lock up the papers
safely, which represent the fictitious wealth of sister-corpora-
tions.

Note the following among the actually existing corporations
of the great State of New York :

" The American Bag-Loaning Com|)any ;" " The American
Hotel-Directory Company " (to print directories for hotels) ;
"The Ball Players' Publishing Company ; " "The John Bauer
Company," for dealing injunhf "The Empire Brewing Com-
pany ; " " Electric Manufacturing and Miscellaneous Stock-Ex-
change Company;" "The Farmers' Milk Company;" "The Me-
tropolitan Milking-Machine Company;" "Metropolitan Cafe
Company " for carrying on an eating-house) ; " The Beady-
Cooked-Food Company" (to provide hot dishes); "The Sala-
manca Embroidery Company," to embroider cloth; "The Horse
Stealing Preventing Society;" "The Chautaqua Lake Camp-
Meeting Company;" "The Gramercy Boat Club;" "The Citi-
zens' Plate Glass Insurance Company;" "The Company to
Prevent Extortion by Gas Companies,"

Does not this list more than justify the exaggerated sarcasm
of Dickens' description of the "Hot Muffin and Crumpet Baking
and Beady Delivery Association," which Mr. Ralph Nickleby in-
augurated so successfully with the help of the eloquent member
of parliament, and which he manipulated so much to his own
profit ? This picture of our American extremes would be ludi-
crous, were it not alarming.

Li arguing against the abuse, further, I note first a point which
is least important — the costly and wasteful methods of produc-
tion caused by private corporations, as compared with individ-
ual, responsible effort. I know that the boast of their advocates
is just the opposite : That the association of the means of many

THE PHILOSOPHY EEGULATmO PRIVATE CORPORATIONS. 339

men enables a corporation to produce a given value more largely
and methodically, and thus more economically; that "union is
strength." The following plain question explodes this plausible
claim: Why do these shrewd corporators, claiming to have
capital and skill for a given production, so jealously shun the
strength of that union which the old right of forming copartner-
ships would give them, and so eagerh^ prefer the private corpo-
ration ? Obviously, because they know that they shall thus get
more gain for their capital and skill, and throw on other people
more of the risks and responsibilities of unlucky ventures. But
somebody must "pay the piper." Of course, the people who
deal with the private corporation miist, on the whole, pay more
than they would to a responsible copartnership. The public,
after giving the corporate privileges, pay more for the service
than it had paid before. Let us exemplify in some detail. Why
does the money-lender so often prefer to lend as a member in
an incorporated bank, rather than as a private citizen? 'Be-
cause he wishes to enjoy the experience and prudence of the
bank to get him safe loans? But suppose this money-lender
has gotten himself made director or cashier in this lending cor-
poration, so that the prudence of the bank is no other than his
own individual prudence? Now, why? Because the banking
corporation can get more interest than private money-lenders.
Why does the capitalist who actually puts in more than enough
money to build and operate one of the largest factories, prefer
to be a shareholder in a company which builds a whole town of
factories? Because he aims not only to manufacture that class
of fabrics, but to operate a monopoly in their sale. Here is
a ship-owner, who has himself plenty of money to build and
man the finest steamer, but he prefers to be one member of a
"navigation company" which has a fleet of steamers plying be-
tween New York and Richmond. He designs to monopolize
the coasting trade between the two ports, so as to charge ex-
actly double freight for the same barrel of potatoes the day af-
ter a competing ship, belonging to an individual owner, ceased
to run. (I speak that I do know.) But j)erhaps the most glar-
ing plunder is that of the "express forwarding companies," pri-
vate corporations chartered to do the duties of "common carri-
ers" on the vehicles of other corporations, which have no other

340 THE PHILOSOPHY REGULATING PEIVATE CORPOEATIONb.

title to existence than to be themselves " common carriers ; " so
that to say thej are not competent to these duties is to confess
themselves dishonest delinquents. A snug plan this, truly, to
make the public pay twice over for one service. No wonder the
express company divides fabulous dividends, rears palaces in
oui* trading towns, parades its cohorts of fat horses and officials !
What is the exalted function which is so magnificently reward-
ed ? Only that which was performed for our forefathers, by sim-
ple wagoners and sturdy shipmasters.

That the means employed by private corporations are pro-
motive of wasteful, and not of economical production, is proved
by their employing in a thousand ways more lavish methods
than individual producers ever do. The administration is on a
scale of gigantic waste. Does the rich private capitalist, carry-
ing his ovnx risks and responsibihties, ever pay his steward or
head clerk $25,000 salary ? the rate of a modern railroad president !
Why is it that all the salaries paid by the corporations are
higher than those paid for similar services by wise individuals,
from the highest to the lowest? The steward of the company
gets his $25,000, while the steward of the most gigantic private
business gets perhaps his $3,500. The mere laborer gets his
$1.50 jMr diem for the same species of manual labor for which
the most thrifty farmer can give onl}' fifty cents. The answer
is clear: the monopolist power which the incorporation con-
fers enables them to rake together masses of money, at the ex-
pense of other industries, which beget prodigality and waste in
administration.

I shall be reminded that this age, so marked by the multitude
of private corporations, is also the age of cheapened produc-
tions. The reconciliation of this with my conclusion is in this
truth. The marvellous applications of beneficent science to the
work of production have indeed cheapened many values to a
great degree. But the contrary influence of the corporations
has, in most cases, intercepted the henefit of this cheapened pro-
duction, in whole or in part, and prevented the people from en-
joying the advantage to the degree to which they are entitled.
It is applied science which has provided economical produc-
tion for us; it is the private corporations which have prevented
a part of the results. Besides, the cheapening of production

THE PHILOSOPHY EEGULATING PRIVATE CORPORATIONS. 341

turns out to be after all partial and deceptive. The corporations
do give us some things astonishingly cheap, partly by making
them in what Carlyle called the "cheap and nasty "way." And
yet, they do not give us, on the whole, cheaper living. They
give us a yard of flimsy calico for five cents, but it costs more to
dress a girl a year, than when French chintz sold for seventy-
five cents. The mortising machine gives us a cheaper panel
door, or slat blind, yet it costs much more to build a given
house than before there were mortising machines.

Second: I advance to a more weighty argument, " 2foney is
powerT It used to be a maxim of political science, that " ichere
power isj thither power tends." As long as the love of power
is native to man's heart, this centripetal tendency must exist.
Jefferson taught that, in order that republican equahty of poUt-
ical rights may continue, no excessive differences of wealth must
arise. Hence, he felt it necessary to abolish in Virginia all
rights of primogeniture ; so that when special energy and skill
should have gathered a large mass of wealth into one hand, pa-
rental love should usually ensure its division at the holder's
death, and thus its redistribution. But we undo his work by
creating corporations which never die, but which continue from
generation to generation to grasp wealth with all the greed of
the "robber-baron," and to hold it perpetually in viortua manUy
with all the tenacity of that baron's descendants with their law
of entails. We create an aristocracy of active capital, furnished
with trains of drilled retainers, far more dangerous to the com-
mon liberties than a landed aristocracy. Must not the natural
arrogance of wealth suggest the lust for more power ? It is for
the gratification of this desire for more gainful organization and
more monopolies, that they first enter the arena of political ma-
noeuvre. Success in this will in due time suggest the desire for
more direct political power. The experience of the American
States with these creatures of their legislation has just passed
through the first stage and is approaching the next. The seniors
among us can rememloer how a moneyed corporation in Phila-
delphia, the creature of the United States, once challenged the
whole force of the United States government, and almost came
off conqueror. It is now the stale jest of some capitals, that
their legislatures meet mainly to register the edicts of railroad

342 THE PHILOSOPHY REGULATING PEIVATE CORPORATIONS.

presidents. In Maryland, tliere is a corporation whose reve-
nues far exceed those of the sovereif:;n commonwealth, and
which commands an army of trained officials so much more nu-
merous, that the state's servants are but a squad before them.
And, for a reason to be explained anon, corporations will always
incline to employ means much more corrupt than private men
would venture, to seduce legislators to bestow further favors.
The eager craving of the age is for equality before the law.
The people are taking the surest plan for disappointing their
own desires, through the growth, out of these corporations, of
oligarchies more oppressive than the feudal aristocracies they
have overthrown. We have made our forms of government ex-
tremely democratic ; and this epoch of democracy witnesses the
creation of the new oligarchies. So "extremes meet." The
peril is illustrated by this fact, that monopolists and victims are
alike so devoted to material good, that they join in flouting the
counsel which would have us forego any of these supposed means
of enrichment, for the sake of sound morality and political
safety, as a silly crotchet. The sufficient answer is, Who expects
the American people to forego the readier means of making
money, for your "political abstraction"?

I urge, third, that the forms of industry promoted by the
powerful corporations tend to undermine the domestic and per-
sonal indejDendence of the yeomanry. The associated means of
production supplant the individual, the products of the older
and more independent forms of industry retreat before those of
the corporations. The time was when manufactures were liter-
ally "domestic," the occupations of the people in their homes.
The producing yeoman was a "free-holder," a person whose
vital significance to British liberty our times have almost for-
gotten. He dwelt and labored under his own roof-tree. He
was his own man, the free-holder of the homestead where his
productions were created by the skill and toil of himself and his
family and servants. Now all this is changed. The wheel and
the loom are no longer heard in the home. Vast factories, owned
by corporations, for whose governors the cant of the age has al-
ready found their appropriate name as "kings of industry," now
undersell the home products everywhere. The axe and the hoe
which the husbandman wields, once made at the country forge.

THE PHILOSOPHY REGULATING PRIVATE CORPORATIONS. 343

ihe shoe upon liis mule's feet, the plough with which he turns
the soil, the very helve of his implement, all come from the fac-
tory. The housewife's industry in brewing her own yeast can
hardly survive, but is supplanted by some "incorporated"
"baking powder," in which chemical adulteration may have full
play. Thus the centralization of capital leads at once to the
centraHzation and degradation of population. The free-holding
yeoman citizen is sunk into the multitudinous mass of the pro-
letariat, dependent on the corporation for his work, his Avages,
his cottage, his kitchen garden, and privilege of buying the pro-
visions for his family. In place of the freeman's domestic inde-
pendence, he now has the corrupting and doubtful resource of
the "labor union" and the "strike." His wife and children are
di-aofCfed from the retirement of a true home into the foul and
degrading publicity of the festering manufacturing village, the
"negro-quarter " of white wage-slaves, stripped of the overseer's
wholesome police and the master's and mistress' benevolent over-
sight. Thus conditions of social organization are again pro-
duced more incompatible than feudalism mth repubHcan insti-
tutions.

The fourth, and chief argument against our system is found
in its influence on the ^drtue of the people. Every one remarks
on the alarming relaxation of business and political morals.
But unless we can refute the testimony of not only Washington,
but of Moses, David and Solomon, correct morals are the very
foundation of public safety, and this unfashionable, homely, and
simple old truth must stubbornly hold its place, notwithstand-
ing nineteenth century smartness. I shall show that the species
of legislation I criticise furnishes the occasion for much of the
corruption which all sensible men dread.

1. One evil begins at the very inception of the legislation. It
puts it into the power of legislators to pass, and of suitors to urge,
enactments directly affecting individual, pecuniary interests.
By this system the legislator, whose only rightful business is
the equitable protection of the moral riglits of all citizens, is in-
vited and enabled to use the sacred power of the commonwealth
to vote money indirectly out of the pockets of one citizen into
those of another. Disastrous invention ! Every prudent states-
man has recognized the peril and the evil cf such political

344 THE PHILOSOPHY BEGULATING PRIVATE CORPORATIONS.

action as suggests, even to the citizens, the habit of looking to
the action of the government for any pecuniary personal advan-
tage, instead of looking to it for the just and equal defence and
regulation of the independent, manly exertions of each citizen
for himself. Whatever may be the direct object of the legisla-
tion, which contains, like the tariff laws, this ill-starred sugges-
tion, it forms a weighty objection to it. It is an unwholesome
day for the virtue of a people, when they learn to look to that gov-
ernment for partial pecuniary advantage, whose only legitimate
action is the equitable guardianship of all. And this is especially
the tendenc}'^ of our unrestricted legislation for private corpora-
tion. The petitioner goes to the legislature of his country with an
unfair motive. Hence immediately the temptation to apply to the
legislator some improper motive. Let me repeat the short de-
monstration : Here is a group of men who desire to combine
their means for the pursuit of some known and customary' busi-
ness. There is the old, fair and honest way of copartnersMpy
with the effective strength arising out of close union, and its
just responsibilities. Why do these men put the legislature ta
the trouble of making them a corporation ? Of course it is be-
cause they expect thereby to acquire some additional and jjartial
advantage over their fellow-citizens with whom they propose ta
deal. These advantages having a money value, of course it be-
comes natural to think of paying money for them. Here the
poisoned fountain is opened for the corruption of the law-
makers themselves.

2. It is an urgent point of moral interest to the common-
wealth, that as few business functions as possible be entrusted
to corporations, especially of those functions which enter into-
the ordinary traffic and production of the people, because "cor-
porations have no soul." Sir Edward Coke uttered this in one
sense ; sensible men have now universally learned to take it in
another. Corporations are too often deficient in that prime
attribute of rational souls, conscience. And the formidable fea-
ture of this fact is, that it is the result of regular and effi-
cient moral causes. The legal personality of the corporation
is artificial ; what more natural than that its attributes should
be artificial? Moral responsibility can only exist as an incli-
vidual thing, binding the separate, single soul, by its own

THE PHILOSOPHY EEGHLATING PEIVATE CORPORATIONS. 345

immediate obligation, to its Divine Ruler. When the agent is
an association, the sense of responsibility is so diminished by
being divided out among numbers, that it comes to be lightly
felt by each member. In point of fact, we see all men yield, in
some degree, to this illusion, except the few who have kept a
thoroughly enlightened and unbending conscience . Average
men will not usually feel as immediate responsibility for their
associated acts, as for their individual acts. The world is full
of instances ; no further illustration is needed.

Again, few appreciate the plausibility of the influence against
just action, arising out of this feature of business associa-
tions, that they usually deposit the ruling responsibility in
one place, and the executive agency in another place. The
orders emanate from the directory, in the great city. The
execution is by the hands of hired officials, away in the coun-
try. These officials are inclined, hy their very Jionesty, to exe-
cute the orders of the heads of the corporation with unques-
tioning punctuality. The ordinary logic of the faithful official
is : "I have nothing to do with directing the action of the cor-
poration ; I am not the least responsible for the moral character
of it. I have covenanted, in consideration of my salary, to exe-
cute orders. I have no business with criticising their moral
propriety as long as I hold my office." Thus, this official has
become as mere a tool as the common soldier in a standing
army. But the directory also persuade themselves that their
fidelity should be in studying exclusively the interests of their
association. The individual injustices they order are executed
far away, and by other and inferior hands ; they do not pique
the consciences of the directors, not being seen.

Let us view a plain instance. Here is an honest and faithful
station agent. A valuable package has been lost by his railroad,
or a neighboring widow's only cow has been injured by a train.
The claim for damages is presented to him as the only accessible
representative of the corporation on the sj)ot. The good man
reaches down from a pigeon-hole a list of the corporation's
rules, and reads to the aggrieved claimant this : " The company,
considering that it has been imposed on in the levying of claims
for damages, instructs all agents to resist such claims in future,
until enforced by process of law." And then, his comment is

346 THE PHILOSOPHY REGULATING PRIVATE CORPORATIONS.

this : " No doubt, respected madam, your case is just, but you
see, / have my orders.'' Now if tliis were au individual trans-
action, would this decent man resist a claim after he had con-
ceded its justice, and wantonly put the injured claimant to the
additional costs of a suit ? He would be ashamed to do it. But
now, he is the tool of a corporation. " He has his orders." 'And
if the lordly directory are asked why they enforce a rule which
Avorks this individual injustice, they answer : " It is our duty to
study the general interest of the stockholders." Thus conscience
is bandied backwards and forwards between employers and em-
ployed, until it is tossed clean out of the business, and the traffic
of the great corporation becomes as heartless as that of a dead
machine.

Hence, I repeat, it is important for the maintenance of the
public conscience, that as little as possible of the ordinary
traffic of society be conducted by corporate agencies, and as
much as possible by individuals or copartnerships, under their
wholesome, personal responsibihties. But private corporations
have been so heedlessly multiplied, that now, many things have
ceased to be done by men in their individual capacities. Do
you wish a parcel carried by land or sea ? It is not done for
you by any individual ship-master or carrier, acting under the
restraints of a personal conscience, but by an " Express Com-
pany" or " Navigation Company." Do you need shoes? You
do not get them from the shop of a cordwainer, but from some
" Shoe Company." Or a handful of nails ? An " Iron Company "
is invoked to produce them. Do you wish your person trans-
ported? You commit it to a "Eailroad Company." Are you
fearful that they may break your neck? You secure an in-
surance from an "Accident Insurance Company." Lo we go to
the end, when oiir heirs secure a grave for us from an incor-
porated " Cemetery Company."

3. The creating of private corporations for transacting the
current business of society is exceedingly unfavorable to moral-
ity, because these associations so multiply the chances for secret
fraud. In illustrating this point, I have but to refer the intelli-
cent reader to the unfathomable tricks of the stock -boards and
of Wall street. "The mystery of iniquity doth already work."
Is not this, in plain English, the recognized prudence of the

THE PHILOSOPHY REGULATING PRIVATE CORPORATIONS. 347

speculator in these markets : tliat lie sliall believe nothing which
is told him by other dealers ; that he shall take it for granted
they always have a concealed design in making whatever repre-
sentations they profess to give the pubUc; that he shall con-
struct his argument as to what is the prudent thing for him to
do by inferring what is his adversary's secret trick? Does not
every lawyer know that it is vain to endeavor to ascertain the
actual solvency of a corporation even by inspecting its records ?
They let him see just so much as tends to mislead him. Who
has not heard of the illustrious invention of "watering stocks";
or of the ways that are dark of sending out the human jackals
to "bear" the stocks the capitalist wishes to buy, or to "bull"
the sinking bonds he is anxious to sell ; of managing the works
of the corporation so as to announce lean dividends when the
"operators in the ring" wish to buy the stock, and of flaunting
before the public fat dividends when they wish to sell; of
buying largely on credit from honest merchants, and selling
largely for cash, dividing out the proceeds of the sales as divi-
dends; so that when pay-day comes, the creditors find only a
dead corporation with no assets, while the members of yester-
day walk abroad to-day rich private citizens, secure from the
righteous claims of the men they have plundered? By all these
arts the large stockholders in the directory victimize the small
holders and the creditors of corporations almost at their wiU.
"The big fish continually eat up the little ones." The whole
system tends "to make the rich richer, and the poor poorer,"
thus producing a condition among the people most incompati-
ble with permanent republicanism.

I have been speaking of the tendencies of this legislation. I
make no sweeping attack upon the personal character of the
members, directors, and officers of these corporations. Many
of these have been men of the noblest public spirit, of blameless
integrity. Their action has been a help and support to their
constituents. Their faithful exercise of the trusts with which
the law has charged them has been the chief influence com-
mending a vicious system, for whose errors they themselves were
not responsible to the confidence of their fellow-citizens. In criti-
cizing the dangerous tendencies of the system, and the sins of
its unworthy members, I would not detract anything from the
fair credit of such men.

3-48 THE PHILOSOPHY REGULATING PRIVATE CORPORATIONS.

Yet tlie crowning objection to the prevalent system is tliat
its tendencies are unfavorable to the virtue of society. This is
not the only occasion of that tide of dishonesty which threatens
to undermine our civilization ; but it is one occasion which the
people can ill afford to tolerate when the other conspiring causes
are so influential.

The history of Federal institutions presents us with one more
commentary on the tendencies of private corporations, which
should be peculiarly instinictive to Southern statesmen. We
have been taught by the fathers of the constitution that the cen-
tralization of political power is adverse to the hberty of the peo-
ple, of which the due independence of the several states in the
exercise of theii- reserved rights is the only earthly bulwark.
But manifestly these incorporations have been promotive of po-
litical centraHzation. The first wrench which perverted the
constitution and the action of the Federal Government from
that equitable model designed by the fathers, was the assump-
tion by Congress of power to create a banking corporation -with-
in the domain of a sovereign State, as the debate on this measure
was the beginning of that undying contest between the party of
reserved rights and liberty, and the party of centraHzation and
despotism, which was never appeased until it ended in the wreck
of the constitution itself. The next great constitutional struggle
was against the protective system, but this is grounded in the
same i^rinciples of class legislation and partial advantage, and it
has always been closely wedded to corporations. They are twin
sisters. But for the influence of private corporations on the
affairs of the United States the revolution of 1861-'5 would never
have been attempted, and without the congenial aid of these as-
sociations the aggressive party would have found the vSouth un-
conquerable in its defence of the constitution and the freedom of
the people.

iroUCTIYE LOGIC DISCUSSED/

I.

WHAT IS INDUCTIVE DEMONSTEATION ?

THE terms deduction, induction, are very currently used,
and they seem to be regarded as signifying two contrasted
methods of ascertaining truths. Tlie description usually given
in popular statements is, that while deduction is the drawing
down of an inference from a more general truth, induction is the
leading in of a general truth from individual facts. There has
doubtless been much bandying of the terms, which was not more
intelligent than the word-play with that other pair of ambiguous
terms, " analysis and synthesis." It is customary to say that
Aristotle first examined and formulated the deductive logic or
syllogism, and Bacon the inductive method. While almost
entire barrenness is imputed to the syllogism, the glory of great
fruit and utility is claimed for the induction. Some, indeed, are
perspicacious enough to see that neither Aristotle nor Bacon
was the inventor of the one or the other method of reasoning,
any more than the first anatomists of human limbs were the in-
ventors of walking. Nature has enabled men to walk, and en-
sured their doing so, with at least imperfect accuracy, by fash-
ioning the parts of their limbs, nerves, bones, tendons, and
muscles. The anatomist has only described what he found in
the limbs by his dissecting knife. Men virtuall}' syllogized be-
fore Aristotle, and found inductive truths before Bacon. Yet
even these more accurate historians seem to think that the two
are opposite methods of logical progression.

These vague opinions of what induction is, are obviously un-
safe. They lead to much invalid and even perilous reasoning.
No stronger testimony against the unauthorized character of
much that now calls itself physical science, under the cover of
sophistical inductions, need be cited than that of J. Stuart Mill.^

' A series of articles wliicli appeared in Tlie Southern Presbyterian Review, for
January, July, and October, 1883.

^ Logic, Vol. I., pp. 480, 481, 7th Edit., London, 1868.

349

350 rN'DUCTIYE LOGIC DISCUSSED.

" So real and practical is tlie need of a test for induction, similar
to tlie syllogistic tes^ of ratiocination, tliat inferences whicli bid
defiance to tlie most elementary notions of inductive logic are
put forth -R-itliout misgi^•ing by persons eminent in physical sci-
ence, as soon as they are off the ground on which they are
familiar T\-ith the facts, and not reduced to judge only by the
arguments; and as for educated persons in general, it may be
doubted if they are better judges of a good or bad induction
than they were before Bacon -syrote. . . . While the thoughts of
mankind haye on many subjects worked ihemselyes practically
right, the thinking power remains as weak as eyer; and on aU.
subjects on which the facts which would check the residt are not
accessible, as in what relates to the in-snsible world, and eyen, as
has been seen lately, to the -sisible world of the planetary re-
gions, men of the greatest scientific acquirements argue as pitiably
as the merest ignoramus." In these days, when the folloAvers of
physical research so often imagine the theologians to be in an
active state of hostihty against them and their sciences, it is well
that we have this accusation fi'om one as remote as possible from
alliance with theology. This able witness jji'o^es at least so
much : that every beam of light which can be thrown on the true
nature of the inductive logic, though slender, is desii-able ; and
will be useful both to purify the sciences of matter and to re-
concile the conflict, if any such exists, between them and philoso-
phy and theology.

We propose first to account for the vagueness which Mr. Mill
has noted in the applications of this species of reasoning, by
briefly displacing the uncertainties and discrepancies existing
among the logicians who have professed to treat of it. The
modern admirers and expounders of Ai'istotle are found to deny
that he did overlook the inductive method, and confine himself
to the syUogistic ; they claim that he formulated the one as really,
if not as fully, as the other. But when they proceed to exhibit
what they suppose to be the AristoteHan form of induction, they
are not agreed. Thus, Grote's Aristotle (Vol. I., p. 268, etc.,
MuiTay, London) intei^^rets him thus : " In syllogism as hitherto
described, we concluded that A the major was predicable of C
the minor, through B the middle. In the syllogism from indue-

WHAT IS INDUCTIVE DEMONSTRATION? 351

tion we begin by affirming tliat A the major is predicable of C
the minor; next we affirm that B the middle is also predicable
of C the minor. The two premises, standing thus, correspond
to the third figure of the S3dlogism (as explained in the preced-
ing pages), and would not, therefore, justify anything more by
themselves than a particular affirmative conclusion. But we
reinforce them by introducing an extraneous assumption that the
minor C is coextensive with the middle B, and comprises the
entire aggregate of individuals of which B is the universal, or
class term." The instance Mr. Grote gives from Aristotle to ex-
plain the above is :

(1), Horse, mule, etc., etc., are long-lived.

(2), Horse, mule, etc., etc., are bileless.

(3), (Extraneous assumption.) The horse, mule, etc., etc., com-
prehend all the bileless animals —

(4), (Conclusion.) Hence, all bileless animals are long-lived.

Now, it is obvious to remark on this : that without the extra-
neous assumption the fourth proposition would not hold good
as a universal truth. The third proposition, or extraneous as-
sumption, then, is not an accessory, but an essential part of the
logical process. But if Aristotle correctly defined syllogism as
a process including the proof and conclusion in three terms and
three propositions, this inductive process here supposed, whether
valid or invalid, is not syllogism. A still more formidable ques-
tion remains : How do we see that the extraneous assumption is
warrantable? Are we entitled to assume that horse, mule, etc.,
etc. (an incomplete enumeration), do contain all the bileless ani-
mals ? Evidently, nothing contained in this formula authorizes
us. The process, then, as a proof of a general proposition, is
inconclusive. It does not give us the form of a valid inductive
proof, and is not the correct analysis of that mental process.

But Mr. Grote himself states that the prior commentators on
Aristotle understand him differently. Thus —

(1), All horse, mule, etc., etc., is long-lived.

(2), All bileless is horse, mule, etc., etc.
, (3), Ergo, all bileless is long-lived.

But Mr. Grote correctly remarks that, while, in form, this
comes correctly under the first figure, it manifestly leaves the
second proposition unwarranted, and authorizes no universal

352 INDUCTIVE LOGIC DISCUSSED.

conclusion. He also quotes M. Bartlielemy St. Hilaire as ex-
plaining Aristotle thus : " Induction is, at bottom, Init a syllo-
gism, whose minor and middle are of equal extension. For the
rest, there is but one sole way in which the minor and middle
can be of equal extension : this is, that the minor shall be com-
posed of all the individuals whose sum the middle represents.
On the one part, all the individuals ; on the other, the whole
species which they form. The mind very readily makes the
equation between these two equal terms." M. St. Hilaire is
right, so far that, if this is the Aristotelian induction, it is per-
fectly valid. Biit it is equally clear that it is perfectly worthless,
as we shall prove by the authority of Galileo. If we must as-
certain the predicate to be true of each separate individual of
the class, by a separate proof, before we can affirm that predi-
cate of the class as a whole, then our general affirmation is cer-
tainly a safe one. But it can certainly teach us nothing, and
authorize no progress in knowledge, because we have abeady
learned in detail all it states, in our examination of the individ-
uals. So Galileo. "Yincentio di Grazia objected to a proof
from induction which Galileo adduced, because all the particu-
lars were not enumerated. To which the latter justly replied
that if induction were required to pass through all the cases, it
would be either useless or impossible : imj)Ossible when the cases
are innumerable ; useless when they have each already been
verified; since, then, the general proposition adds nothing to
our knowledge." (Quoted in Whewell's Inductive Sciences, Yol.
II., p. 219.)

"Whewell himself explains Aristotle after that general method
of the commentators which Grote rei^rehends. Thus the former :
"Induction is when, by means of one extreme term, we infer the
other extreme term to be true of the middle term." This Whew-
ell explains thvis :

(1), Mercury, Yenus, Mars describe elhpses about the sun.

(2), All planets do what Mercury, Yenus, Mars do.

(3), Ergo, aU planets describe ellipses about the sun. {Induc-
tive Sciences, Yol. II., p. 50.)

Again, we repeat, in our anxiety to have the reader see the
real weak point in all these theories of induction, the fatal de-
fect is in the second proposition. What authorizes us to say

WHAT IS INDUCTIVE DEMONSTEATION ? 353

■that all planets do as Mercury, Venus, Mars do ? The theory
of these authors gives us no answer ; the assertion is not author-
ized ; and the process, as a proof, is Avorthless.

Ueberweg {Hist of Phil., Vol. I., p. 156) represents Aristotle
thus: "In induction {i-o-ycofr/, o ic i-ajcoy?^:: aoXXoycafio^) we con-
ckide from the observation that a more general concept includes
(several or) all of the individuals included under another concept
of inferior extension, that the former concept is a predicate of
the latter. (Afialytics jPrior, II., 23.) Induction leads from the
particular to the universal, (d-6 zio:^ y.adiy.aaza izc ra ■/.adoXoi)
Iffooo^. Topics, I., 10.) The term l-ayco-fr^, for induction, svig-
gests the ranging of particular cases together in files, like troops.
The complete induction, accoi'ding to Aristotle, is the only
strictly scientific induction. The incomplete induction which,
with a syllogism subjoined, constitutes the analogical inference
{jzafjddecyfia), is principally of use to the orator."

We pass now from the Stagyrite logic to the method of Lord
Bacon, which it is customary to represent as its antithesis. Ba-
con's claim to be the founder of modern physical science has
been both asserted and contested. The verdict of Mill seems to
be just: that he does deserve great credit, not so much for giv-
ing the real analysis of the inductive method as for pointing us
to the quarter where it lies. The very title of his N^ovxim Or-
gamini, "Concerning the Interpretation of Natiu'e," struck the
correct key-note. The problem of all science, mental as well as
physical (and it is to be noted that Bacon claims. Book L, Aph-
orism 127, that his method is as applicable to mental and moral
sciences as to material), is to interpret the facts given us by
nature. The right method was doubtless pointed out when Ba-
con told the world, in the beginning of his Novum Orgaivum,
that instead of assuming general propositions, and then audaci-
ously deducing from them, by syllogism, what causes and facts
shall be, we are to begin in the opposite way, by the humble,
patient, and accurate observation of facts, and then proceed, by
legitimate inductions, to general and more general propositions
concerning nature's laws.

Bacon says. Book II., Aphorism 1, that as the work and design
of human power is to induce upon a given body a new property
or properties, so the work and design of human science is to dis-

VOL. III.— 23.

354 iNDUcxmE logic discussed.

cover tlie "form" of a given property. Tlie -vrliole tenor of his
discussion shows that by "natura" he means anv permanent
propei-ty of a concrete individual thing. He himself has defined
the sense in which he uses the word "form," T^dth a clearness
which admits of no debate. Thus, Book II., Aphorism 17 : " For
when we speak oifornis, we mean nothing else than those laws
and determinations of pure activity which regulate and consti-
tute some simple property [naturam simjylicem) , as caloric, lights
weight, in every material thing and subject susceptible thereof."
He admits that the old philosophy rightly declared, ^Ho hiov: a
thing truly is to knoiv it through its causes." These causes Aris-
totle had distinguished into four — the material cause, the formal
cause, the efficient cause, and the final cause. In the investiga-
tion of natvire, the inquiry after the final cause is out of place-
He teaches elsewhere that it belongs to philosophy and natural
theology. He also turns aside fi'om inquiry into the material
and the efficient causes in their abstract senses. The problem
of induction is to ascertain the regular law of the formal cause.
The directions for the interpretation of nature fall, then, un-
der two general classes. The first show us how to derive gen-
eral truths from experience ; the second dii"ect us how to apply
these general truths to new experiments, which may further re-
veal nature. To deduce a general truth from experience, indi-
vidual observations, there is, first, a task for the senses, that of
accurate, distinct observation of the individual facts of natural
history ; there is then a task for the memory, the tabulating of
coordinate instances ; and there is then the task of the intellect
or reason, the real induction, which is the detection, among all
the resembling and differing instances, of the universal law of
cause. It is the last task in which the mind must have the aid
of the proper canons of induction, by all attainable comparisons.
Thus : let a muster, or array, be made of all the known individ-
ual instances in which the propeiiy which is the subject of in-
quiry is present. Then let another array be made of the known
instances in which that property is absent. Then let another ar-
ray be made of the known instances in which the jDroperty is
present, increased or diminished. When these sets of cases or
arrays are carefully pondered and compared, the law {forma)
of the property will begin to reveal itself by this principle: that.

WHAT IS INDUCTR'^E DEMONSTRATION ? 355

whatever is always present with that property, or always absent
when it is absent, or is found increased or diminished with it —
that is the cause of the property. This inductive process is then
illustrated at tedious length by an application to the inquiry,
What is heat? First, a list is made of all known individual
things in nature which exhibit heat, as solar rays, combustive
masses, fermenting masses, quick-lime moistened, animal bodies,
etc., etc. Then a list is made of bodies which exhibit no caloric,
as the fixed stars, the moon, etc. Then lists are formed of objects
more or less warm; and the vindemiatio, or induction to the
ivue forma, or law of caloric, may be cautiously made. This is,
that '■^Caloric is an expansive motion, repressed and striving in
the lesser parts of the warm body." (Book II., Aph. 18.) This
first vindemiatio is then to be tested and confirmed by consider-
ing a number oi pi'erogatival instances, which are particular in-
stances presenting the property under such circumstances as
give them the prerogative of determining the law of the pro-
perty. Of such instances, twenty-five are enumerated ! and with
a refinement and intricacy' of distinction which must be utterly
confusing to a practical investigator.

The disparaging verdict which Mill pronounces upon this tech-
nical part of the Baconian Organuin, must be admitted to be
just. Yet it should be mitigated by the fact that, cumbersome
as the proposed canon is, it seems to have led Bacon, centuries
in advance of his age, in the direction of the latest theory as to
what caloric is. That theory now is, that caloric is a mode of
molecular motion. Bacon's conclusion was that it is " the striv-
ing of an expansive but restrained motion in the lesser parts of
a body!" His method was not mere groping: it foreshadowed
an imperfect truth. In the light of fuller inquiries, Bacon's
errors seem to have been these : that his contempt for the ab-
stract in metaphysics led him to neglect the fundamental notion
of 2>ower hi the efficient cause, discriminating it so vitally fi'om
the material, formal, and final causes, and thus to depreciate the
inquiry into efficient cause ; that he had not pondered and settled
this other truth of metaphysics, the relation between power and
properties in individual things ; and that he applied his induc-
tion, in his favorite examples, to detect i\\e forrna, or law of a
propert}-, instead of the laics of effects. It is the latter inquiry

356 INDUCTIVE LOGIC DISCUSSED.

in wliicli inductive science is really concerned, and tlie solution
of wliicli extends man's powers over nature. The thing we wish
inductive philosoph}^ to teach us is, how may we be sure to pro-
duce, in the future, a given desired e^ect, v^hich. has been known
in the past?

The illustrious Newton, who did more than any other to throw
lustre on the new method by its successful application, presents
us, in his four rules {Prhicipia, 3d Book), a substantive advance
upon the rude beginnings of Bacon. These rules are far from
being exhaustive ; nor are they stated in an analytic order, but
they are the sound dictates of the author's experience and pro-
found sagacit}'.

"1. We are not to admit other causes of natural things than
such as both are true (not merely imaginary) and suffice for ex-
plaining their phenomena.

" 2, Natural effects of the same kind are to be referred to the
same causes, as far as can be done.

" 3. The qualities of bodies which cannot be increased or di-
minished in intensity, and which belong to all bodies in which
we can institute experiments, are to be held for qualities of all
bodies whatever.

" 4. In experimental philosophy, propositions collected from
2)/ienoniena by induction are to be held as true, either accurately
or ai^proximately, notwithstanding contrary hypotheses, till other
phenomena occur, by which they may be rendered either more
accurate or liable to exception."

Sii' William Hamilton, in his Logic, Lecture 17th, describes his
"inductive categorical syllogism" as "a reasoning in which we
argue from the notion of all the constituent parts discretively,
to the notion of the constituted Avhole collectively. Its general
laws are identical with those of the deductive categorical syllo-
gism; and it may be expressed, in like manner, either in the
form of an intensive or of an extensive syllogism." This he
calls "logical or formal induction." The process is precisely
that which we have seen described by St. Hilaire : When a given
predication has been found true of every individual of a class, it
is also true of the class as a whole. This is unquestionably true ;
but as unquestionably useless, as we have seen from the state-
ment of Galileo. It gives us only a truism, and no new truth.

WHAT IS INDUCTIVE DEMONSTRATION ? 357

But Hamilton proceeds to distinguish from this what he calls
the "philosophical or real induction," in which the argument is
not from all of the individuals in a class to the class as a whole ;
but from a part of the individuals to the Avhole. He sajs that
the validity which this induction may have, is not from the logi-
cal law of identity, but from a certain presumption of the objec-
tive philosopher, founded on the constancy of nature. This
species of induction proceeds thus :

(1), This, that, and the other magnet, attract iron.

(2), But this, that, and the other magnet, represent all mag-
nets.

(3), Ergo, all magnets attract iron.

This doctrine he again enlarges in his 32nd Lecture, where he
treats of modified logic, and deals wdth the " real or philosophi-
cal induction " expressl}'. He again makes it an inference from
the many to the all. To the soundness of such an induction two
things are requisite : that the cases colligated shall be of the same
quality, and that they shall be of a number competent to gi'ound
the inference. But to the question. How many like cases are
competent? he has no answer. This species of induction, he
admits, cannot give a categorical conclusion. It only raises a
probability of truth, and leaves the conclusion a mere hypo-
thesis, sustained by more or less of likelihood. That likelihood
is, indeed, increased as a larger number of cases is compared, as
the observation and comparison are made more accurate, as the
agreement of cases is clear and precise, and as the existence of
possible exceptions becomes less probable after thorough ex-
ploration. Hamilton concludes by quoting with approbation
these words from Esser's Logic : " Induction and analogy guar-
antee no perfect certainty, but only a high degree of proba-
bility."

The objection against the Aristotelian syllogism of induction,
which we urged on pages 351 and 352, had been stated by Arch-
bishop Whately. Let it be put thus :

(1), This, that, and the other magnet, attract iron.

(2), But this, that, and the other magnet, etc., are conceived
to constitute the genus magnet.

(3), Ergo, the genus magnet attracts iron.

Whately 's objection is, that the second 2>ro2)Osition is mani'

358 INDUCTIVE LOGIC DISCUSSED.

festly false. Hamilton pronounces this, wliicli appears to us a
fatal, "a very superficial objection." His reason is, tliat it is
extra-logical ; tliat logic is a formal science only ; and that hence
the correctness of its forms is not vitiated by the circumstance
that some proposition expressed in them and correctly con-
nected, so far as these forms go, with other propositions, is in
fact untrue, and that the imaginary propositions with which the
text-books of logic illustrate the logical forms answer just as
well, whether the}' be really true or not. Hamilton is here
clearly misled by a confusion of thought. Because an imagi-
nary, or even a silly, proposition may serve to illustrate a rule
of logic, when that rule is the subject of inquiry, it does not fol-
low that, when the ascertainment of other truth by the use of the
rules of logic is our object, that can be a good logic whose frame-
work always and necessarily involves a false proposition. Blank
cartridges may serve very well for the purposes of an artillery
drill; it by no means follovv^s that blank cartridges are adequate
for actual artillery practice in war. Such artillery woiild be
practically no artillery ; for it would repulse absolutely no enemy.
And such logic would be practically uo logic. Logic is a formal
science. True. But it professes to give the general forms of
elenchtic thought, by which the truth of the propositions of all
other sciences, besides logic, may be ascertained. Hence, if it
projDOses to us a given form of thought which is always and
necessarily invalid in every real science to which logic offers its
method, that form is incorrect as a logical form. We affirm
"WTiately's objection, then, in order to call the reader's attention
again to the fatal weak spot in these theories of induction.

What, then, is Whately's own explanation of the inductive
syllogism? See his Logic, Book lA^., Chap. I. He begins by
justly distinguishing two uses of the word induction, which are
entirely different. The one process is not a process of argu_
ment to the conclusion, but is wholl}^ preliminary thereto, the
k~a.Yiofr^, or bringing in of like instances ; the collecting process ;
and this is, in fact, nearer to the literal meaning of the word.
The other process called induction, is the argumentative one,
leading in the conclusion, as to the whole class, from the in-
stances. Now, of this logical induction, Whately remarks that,
instead of being different from the syllogistic, it is the same with.

WHAT IS INDUCTIVE DEMONSTRATION? 359

it. And, indeed, unless we assert its sameness, we must give up
the tlieory of the syllogism ; for that theory is, that syllogism
expresses the one form in which the mind performs every valid
Teasoning step. The logical induction is, then, says Whately, a
syllogism in the first mode and figure, with its major premise
suppressed. That suppressed major is always substantially the
same in all logical inductions : that tohat belongs to the individual
cases observed, belongs to their lohole class. The induction by
which we predict, in advance of individual examination, that all
magnets will attract iron, would then stand thus, according to
Whately :

(1), What belongs to the observed magnets, belongs to all
magnets.

(2), But these observed magnets attract iron.

(3), Ergo, all magnets attract iron.

Now the reader will observe that Whately's process only in-
verts the order of the first two propositions in Hamilton's. For
Whately's first is only a different way of expressing Hamilton's
second : that

(2), " This, that, and the other magnet, represent all magnets."

The order of propositions given by Whately seems obviously
the simple and correct one. But the difficulty he had pro-
pounded as to the Aristotelian form of the induction, recurs as
to his : How have we ascertained our major premise, that what
belongs to the observed magnets belongs to the whole class ?
Are we entitled to hold it as a universal truth ? The same diffi-
culty virtually meets Whately. It is amusing to find him at-
tempting to parry this fatal difficulty in a way similar to that
which Hamilton uses to parry him : " Induction, therefore, so far
forth as it is an argtimeiit, may, of course, be stated syllogis-
ticaUy ; but so far forth as it is a process of inquiry, with a
view to obtain the premises of that argument, it is, of course,
out of the province of logic." The evasion is as vain for
Whately as it was for Hamilton. For that universal major
premise, namely, that what belongs to the observed individual
cases belongs to the whole class, can no more be the im-
mediate non-logical result of a mere colligation of cases, than
the conclusion itself of the inductive syllogism can be. Whately
has himself admitted that if a premise used in a syllogism

360 INDUCTIVE LOGIC DISCUSSED.

now in hand was a conclusion of any previous reasoning pro-
cess, tlien our logic must concern itself about tliat premise also,
and tlie mode by wbicli we get it, as well as aboiit the form
of its relations to the other propositions in our present syllogism.
Now, the universal major he claims, is not the mere expression
of an extra-logical colligation — that is self-evident. Unless it is
an original intuition, it must be the conclusion of a prior logical
process. What is that process? Is this universal major valid?
"Whately gives us no sufficient answer ; and thus his theory of
inductive argument fails like the others. Yet, it presents us, as
we shall see, one step in advance of the others, towards the
risfht direction.

Dr. TVhewell deserves mention also, by reason of his wide
learnin<^, extending into the domains of physics and metaphysics,
and his authorship of a work, once a standard, devoted to this
very subject. This is his Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences.
His view of induction may be seen in these citations (Vol. I., p.
22) : Where " truths are obtained by beginning from observation
of external things, and by finding some notion in which the
things, as observed, agree, the truths are said to be obtained by
induction." Contrasting deduction with induction, he says, " De-
ductive truths are the results of relations among our thoughts.
Inductive truths are relations which we perceive among existing
things^ And of the deductive process he thinks the geometri-
cal demonstrations the best examples.

Now, the insufficiency of these descriptions is obvious from
' these remarks. Lines, angles, surfaces, sohds, in geometry, are
as truly things as any observed phenomena or effects in physics.
Thus the distinction wholly fails. Again, "Whewell has com-
bined, in his description of induction, two processes of mind
which are wholly distinct, and only one of which is a logical
process. Both have, indeed, been called induction (in different
senses), but the first is only a colligation of observed things or
facts. This process only completes a general statement which
gives correct expression to a series of individual observed facts,
when taken as a whole. The instance given by another presents
this process very simply : A navigator in unknown seas beholds
land ; he knows not whether it is continent or island. But he
sails along its shores, noting its bays and headlands, and taking

WHAT IS INDUCTIVE DEMONSTRATION ? 361

ocular evidence of the continuity of tlie whole coast, until he be-
holds again the same spot he first saw. He calls the land now
an island. But he has made no logical inference; he has but
colligated all his separate notes of the coasts, with their connect-
ing continuity, into that general concept of which "island" is
the correct name. Now, this is really what Kepler did when he
performed what has so often been cited as a splendid instance
of induction : from a number of observed angular motions of the
sun in the ecliptic, he declared that the earth moved in an ellipse,
with the sun at one of '(k\& foci. The real process was but to
plot and colligate upon a plane surface, all the successive posi-
tions of the earth; whereupon inspection showed that the line
she had pursued was elliptical. A still simpler and equally illus-
trious instance of this process was given when Maury enounced
the general facts of his wind-and-current charts. His results
were obtained by faithfully j)lotting, upon blank charts of the
oceans, the directions of the ^\dnds and currents, with the suc-
cessive dates, from a multitude of actual observations in sailors'
log-books. When this humble but noble work was patiently
done, the general facts as to the directions of the winds and cur-
rents, at given seasons, revealed themselves to inspection. Here
was a grand colligation, but, as yet, no inference. But we have
a time instance of inductive inference when Newton derived the
great law of the attraction of gravitation, as expressing the true
cause of that elliptical circulation. Kepler had colligated only a
general fact ; Newton inducted a law of cause. Whewell seems,
p. 23, to confound them.

But on p. 48 he speaks, if still too indefinitely, yet more
nearly to the truth. " Induction is familiarly spoken of as the
process by which we collect a general proposition from a number
of particular cases ; and it appears to be frequently imagined
that the general proposition restdts from a mere juxtaposition of
the cases, or, at most, from merely conjoining and extending
them." . . "This is an inadequate account of the matter." . .
"There is a conception of the mind introduced into the general
proposition, which did not exist in any of the observed facts."
The phrase "conception of the mind" is indeed an inaccurate
expression for the missing but all-important element of the logi-
cal induction. But Wliewell had perceived so much: that this

"362 IXDUCTITE LOGIC DISCUSSED.

element of proof was not in tlie mere colligation of agreeing in-
stances alone, but was to be furnished from another source.
And he points our inquiries in the right direction, in seeking
this xital jDremise among the intuitive judgments of the reason.
It is to be found in that judgment which so many of these
writers speak of as our conviction of the uniformity of nature!
Thus, in substance, answer the most of them, as Hamilton and
his great German authorities, Krug and Esser. But this is the
question.

The comments of Lord Macaulav on the inductive method, in
his famous Essay on Lord Bacon, justify the angry estimate of
his comrade. Brougham, bv their superficial character. But
thev may also serve to show how just the complaint of Mill is
as to the confusion of the opinions of even educated men on
this subject. IMacaulay, with his usual plausible brilhancy, as-
sures us that the method of the Novum Organum was nothing
more than the familiar experimental argument of the Enghsh
squire as to the cause of his bodily ailments. The result of the
squire's induction is to trace his sufferings to his indulgence in
his favorite dainties. On the nights after free indulgence he
suffered much. On nights when he had wholly abstained, he
was free from pain. On nights when he had indulged sparingly,
he suffered slightly. Here, intimates Macaulay, we have the
whole Baconian process, the comparentia histantiarum similium^
the exclusiones instantiarum negativarum; the comparationes
pluHs aut m^inoris. He seems to think that this embraces the
inductive logic !

Fleming, in his Yocdbulary of Philosojyhy, after citing numer-
ous definitions of induction, which exhibit the uncertainties and
confusions criticized in these pages, gives his own statement
thus: "By the principle of induction is meant the ground or
warrant on which we conclude that what has happened in cer-
tain cases, which have been observed, will also happen in other
cases which have not been observed. This principle is involved
in the words of the wise man, Eccles. i. 9 : ' The thing that hath
been, it is that which shall be ; and that which is done is that
which shall be done.' In nature there is nothing insulated. All
things exist in consequence of a suflicient reason; all events
occur according to the efficacy of proper causes. In the Ian-

WHAT IS INDUCTIVE DEMONSTRATION? 363

guage of Newton, Effectuum naturaliiim ejusde^n generis ecedent
sunt causce. The same causes j)i'Oflnce the same effects. The
principle of induction is an application of the principle of cau-
sahtj," etc. Of this description we may say w^hat was said of
Whewell's, but with more emphatic approval : that it points us
in the right direction.

We now introduce the definitions of three contemporary
American logicians. The Rev. Dr. McCosh says {Div. Gov., p.
289) : "Induction is an orderly observation of facts, accom-
panied by analysis ; or, as Bacon expresses it, the ' necessary
exclusions ' of things indifferent, and this followed by a pro-
cess of generalization, in which we seize on the points of agree-
ment."

Professor Bowen, Logic, p. 380, teaches that induction is from
some observed cases to the many not observed; and he passes
this verdict on the process: "But just so far as they" (induc-
tions) "are means to these ends, they lose the character of pure
or demonstrative reasonings, the syllogisms to which they are
reducible are faulty, either in matter, as having a major premise,
the universality of Avhich is merely prohahle, or in form, as con-
taining an undistributed middle."

" Induction, properly so called, concerns the matter of tlioug]it,
and concludes from so7ne to all."

Dr. Porter, Elements of Intellectual Science, Abr. Ed., p. 393,
says : "Judgments of induction differ from simple judgments in
several important particulars. (In the simple judgments we
bring the individuals under the appropriate common concept.)
In induction w^e proceed farther: we add to those simple judg-
ments yet another, namely, that what we have found to be true
of these, may be received as true of all others like them. The
ground of the first judgment is facts observed and compared.
The ground of the second is what is called the analogy of na-
ture. A judgment of induction is, then, a judgment of compar-
ing ohservation, enlarged hy a judgment of analogy. The judg-
ment of observation is founded on an ohserved similarity ; the
judgment of induction on an. interpreted indication"

We have postponed to the last the notice of two celebrated
philosophers, Dugald Stewart and John Stuart Mill, because
they both exhibit, as a common trait, the influence of their

364 INDUCTIVE LOGIC DISCUSSED.

countryman, Hume, in "^Testing tlieir \dews from the truth.
Stewart (Vol. III., Chap. lY., of the Method of Inqidi'y pointed
out in the Experimental, or Inductive, Logic), amidst many elegant,
but confused, digressions, reaches substantially the same view
of inductiye reasoning -udth his predecessors. (P. 246.) " "^Mien,
by thus comparing a number of cases agreeing in some circum-
stances, but differing in others, and all attended -with the same
result, a philosopher connects, as a general law of nature, the
event with its j!?7^?/semZ cause, he is said to proceed according to
the method of i?idncfwn.'' "In drawing a general physical con-
clusion from pai-ticular facts, we are guided merely by our in-
stinctive expectation of the continuance of the laws of nature ;
an expectation which, implying little, if any, exercise of the rea-
soning powers, operates alike on the philosopher and on the
savage." . . . " To this belief in the permanent uniformity
of physical laws, Dr. Eeid long ago gave the name of the induc-
tive j)rincij)?e."

Stewart seems to admit by implication what we have seen
Hamilton and Bowen assert so plainly, that the physical induc-
tion can give only a probable evidence, and can never demon-
strate absolutely a universal truth. For Stewart, in commenting
on the nteresting fact that the inductive method is applicable in
mathematics, reminds us that it was only by this method Newton
proved the binomial theorem ; and then proceeds to argue, pp.
318, 319, that, had this theorem not really been sustained hy
some principle more valid than is found in any jDhysical induc-
tion, mathematicians wovdd not have accepted it as universally
true for all exponents of the {a-\-o?). All the proof, says he^
which Newton seemed to have of the binomial theorem, was to-
expand the products, by actual multiplication, of the {ct-\-x) to-
the second, the third, the fom'th, and to such a mimber of powers
as satisfied him that the laws he found jjrevaihng for the
number of terms, and the exponents and coefficients in all the
products actually inspected, might be trusted to prevail in all
other powers, however high. Now, had this been really all,
jStewart thinks we should have had, in this mathematical for-
mula, a specimen of induction exactl}- like physical induction.
And he evidently thinks it could not have been demonstrative
of the universal truth, but only evidential of the probable trutk

WHAT IS INDUCTIVE DEMONSTRATION? 365

of the formula for iintried cases. He tbiuks there is really, la-
tent iu the process of Newton, a further evidence, which is
demonstrative : that Avhen the actual multiplications are pursued
to several powers, the mind sees a reason why the coefficients
and exponents not only do, but must, follow the law observed
by inspection in the products expanded. Does not this imply
that in the case of physical inductions, a similar desideratum is
lacking ? Surely. But Stewart does not supply it. Surely, he
cannot think that he finds it in " permanent uniformity of phy-
sical laws," which he regards as the inductive principle ; for he
thinks it is instinctive, rather than rational. Thus he leaves his
system of inductive logic as baseless of solid foundation as the
others.

But the worst legacy of the philosophy of Hume he leaves us,
is his distinction between the physical cause and the efficient
cause. The physical cause is the invariable actual antecedent of
the jy^^^i^onienon regarded as effect. The efficient cause is the
secret unseen power the mind imputes ; and he declares the word
jpoioer expresses an attribute of mind, not of matter. He ex-
pressly declares that the object of induction is to seek, not the
efficient, but the physical cause. (Pp. 230, 231.) And his rea-
sons are but the deceptive ones of the sensationahstic philosophy
which misled, in part, even Brown and Stewart, and so much
more sadly, Mill : that observation of physical sequences gives
us nothing but a regular antecedent and consequent ; so that
physical science should have to do with nothing more. That
this often repeated conclusion is utterly sophistical appears from
these two tests : observation of physical phenomena gives us no
general concepts ; for all philosophers agree that nature jDresents
to the eye nothing but individual things and jyAd;iCwze;?(?. Shall
physical science, therefore, have no business with general con-
cepts and universal propositions ? Again, nature presents to the
eye no inference of any kind. Shall physical science then dis-
card inference ? Carry out this argument, and man's relation to
nature must sink to that of the cunning brute, the ant or the
beaver. Hence it appears that, if there is to be any science or
any theory, elements must be contributed to it from the subjec-
tive powers of the mind, as well as from the outward observed
facts and things. Stewart was the more unpardonable for mak-

366 INDUCTIVE LOGIC DISCUSSED.

ing this concession against the inquiry for the efficient cause, for
that he is not really a sensationalist, but admits the mind has
intuitive notions and judgments. He should have remembered
that, granting what the eyes observe in the rise of ajy/^enowie/io^
is only its regular antecedent, we rationally supply to the real
causal antecedent, as its own property, the notion of poioer.
Just as when by the senses we perceive a cluster of properties
of a concrete thing, the law of the reason necessitates our sup-
plying the notion of suhstance. It is impossible for us to think
the antecedent which seems next the effect the real next ante-
cedent, unless we judge it to emit i\ie potcer efficient of the effect.
In a word, the physical cause, can, in truth, be none other than
the efficient cause. If we do not know, by sense-perception, what
the power is, we rationally know that it is ; if we do not know
its TO Tzco;;, we do know its to otc. Hence, its reality is as proper
a ground for argument and inference as the reality of any con-
crete body. Do we know what the energy we call electricity is ?
Yet we construct a thousand experiments to seek it, and infer-
ences from its power. Stewart ought to have affirmed, then^
precisely what he denied, what Newton affirmed : that the real
object of the inductive inference is to find the efficient cause.

We shall see that the chief, the only useful, problem of in-
duction is, to ascertain the certain laws of given effects. Hoto
can an antecedent hring the effect certainly after it, imless it he
efficient thereof? To limit induction, as Stewart and Mill do, to
the ascertainment only of the physical antecedent, is to forbid
induction from ever rising above the probabilities of mere enu-
merated sequences, whose worthlessness to science Bacon has
so well exposed. Have we not the clue, in this refusal of the
search after the efficient cause, to the imperfections and confu-
sions of their treatment? We repeat, the reversal of this diction
of theirs is vital.

Mill is at once the best and the worst of all the English-
speaking logicians, in his treatment of the inductive logic. His
insight into its true nature is far the most profound and correct ;
and his technical canons of induction the most simple and accu-
rate at once. But his error as to the rudimental doctrine, which
underlies all his admirable discriminations, is the most obsti-
nate. To him eminently belongs the credit of vindicating for

WHAT IS INDUCTIVE DEMONSTRATION ? 367

tlie inductive logic tlie character of a true demonstration, and
of showing where that demonstration is founded. Having set
aside the inaccurate uses of the word induction, he defines as
follows (Bk. III., Ch. II., § 1) :

" Induction, then, is that operation of the mind by which we
infer that what we know to be true in a particular case or cases,
wall be true in all cases which resemble the former in certain
assignable respects." (Chap. III., Sec. 1.) "It consists in in-
ferring from some individual instances in which a phenomenon is
observed to occur, that it occurs in all instances of a certain
class ; namely, in all which resemble the former in what are re-
garded as the material circumstances." But since the mere ob-
servation of a similarity of sequence in a number of instances
does by no means authorize this expectation as to instances not
observed— a truth which Mill here implicitly recognizes, and
elsewhere expressly acknowledges — the all-important question
remains, what is it that authorizes the mind to infer positively,
in the case of the valid induction, that the unobserved instances
will be like the observed ? He answers (§ 1) : " The proposition
that the course of nature is uniform, is the fundamental princi-
ple or general axiom of induction." "If we throw the whole
course of any inductive argument into a series of syllogisms, we
shall arrive by more or fewer steps at an ultimate syllogism,
which will have for its major premise the principle or axiom of
the uniformity of the course of nature." Again (Chap. V., § 1),
recognizing the general law of logic, that only universal premises
can yield universal conclusions in the mathematical reasonings,
he admits that it must be so likewise in inductive reasonings.
" This fundamental law must resemble the truths of geometry in
their most remarkable peculiarity, that of never being, in any
instance whatever, defeated or suspended by any change of cir-
cumstances." But where do we find such a uuiversal principle?
He answers: '^ This law is the law of causation^ (§ 2.) "On
the universality of this truth depends the possibihty of reducing
the inductive process to rules." "The notion of cause is the
root of the whole theory of induction." And most emphatically
(in Chap. XXL, § 1) having expounded his canons of induction,
for discriminating between the sequences which authorize, and
those which do not. authorize, expectation of the same phe-

368 INDUCTIVE LOGIC DISCUSSED.

noiixena recurring, lie says : " The basis of all tliese logical ope-
rations is tlie law of causation. The validity of all the inductive
methods depends on the assumption that every event, or the
beginning of every jy/i^/if^/ie^^o/i, must have some cause."

But this excellent doctrine he then fatally neutralizes by the
doctrine of the sensationalists concerning the notion of causa-
tion. This he declares to be of empirical origin (Chap. Y., § 2) :
"The only notion of a cause which the theory of induction
requires, is such a notion as can be gained from experience."
He deems that the tie of power, which we think the reason, but
not the senses, sees between cause and effect, is " such as cannot,
or at least does not, exist between any physical fact and that
other physical fact on which it is invariably consequent, and
which is popularly termed its cause.'" He distinguishes, with
Eeid and Stewart, between the physical and the efficient cause,
and declares that induction concerns itself only about the physi-
cal cause. TVith him, causation is " invariahle, unconditional
antecedence ' ; nothing more.

Again (Chapter Y., § 3), after referring to the truth that a se-
quent effect is not usually found to be the regular result of a sole
antecedent, but of a cluster of several antecedent lyhenomena and
states, he claims that all these regular antecedents are equally
cause, and that the mind has no ground for assigning efficiency
to one more than another. He seeks to abolish the distinction
between the efficient causes and the conditions of an effect. If
one eats of poisonous food and dies, we have no reason to call
the poison the cause of the death, rather than the idios;\Ticrasy
of the man's constitution, the accidental state of his health at
the time, and the state of the atmosphere, for all had some con-
current influence to occasion the result. " The real cause is the
whole of these antecedents ; and we have, philosophically speak-
ing, no right to give the name of cause to one of them, exclu-
sively of the others."

These dicta, as we shall show, are subversive of the author's
own better doctrine, cited in the previous paragraph. For it is
easy to see that, if they were true, they would be fatal to that
certainty and universality which he has himself correctly de-
manded for the major premise of all inductions. Waiving, for
the present, the discussion of the question whether our notion

WHAT IS INDUCTIVE DEMONSTRATION? 369

of causation is empii'ical, we would point out that there is, obvi-
ously^ no invariable, no certain connection between the mere
condition of an effect and its actual rise. This condition must
be present, if it is a conditio sine qua non, in order to the rise of
the effect ; but it may be duly present, and yet the effect may
not come. This simple remark shows that, were efficient cause
no more invariably connected ^dth effect than is a condition,
then cause and effect would not have any of that uniformity and
universal certainty of effect which, Mill admits, is essential to
ground the inductive argument. But he asserts that the condi-
tion is part cause, and as much entitled to be \'iewed as real
cause as any other part of the antecedents supposed to be more
efficient. Thus he contradicts himself. This suggests the fur-
ther argument, that our common sense is not mistaken in ascrib-
ing an efficiency or power to the cause such as it does not ascribe
to the occasion ; because we know, experimentally, that the true
cause has a connection wi'th the effect more necessary than the
occasion has. Oftentimes conditions may be changed, and yet
the regular effect continue to occur ; but if the truly causal ante-
cedent be lacking, all the appointed conditions remain dumb
and barren of effect, though duly present. For instance, in or-
der that germination may result, there must be moisture, warmth,
and vegetable -sitalit}^ in the seed. Can any reasoning man be-
lieve that moisture or warmth is as essentially, efficient of the
growth as the vital energy is? No. For he sees that all the
water in the sea and all the caloric in the sunbeams, conjoined,
would never produce growth until the vital germ is added. But
as soon as this is present, in addition to the other two, the
growth regularly takes place. They are conditions, this alone
efficient cause of living, vegetable growth. Mill has evidently
been unconsciously deceived by the fact that there are effects
in which more than one vera causa concur as efficients, in addi-
tion to certain conditions. Thus, in the case of a moving body
driven by two forces in different lines, each force is true cause
of the resulting diagonal motion, in addition to the other condi-
tions of mobility.

But to us this appears to be the crowning proof of error in
ihis doctrine of Mill, that often we find conditions of effects
which are merely negative. Yet they may be conditions sine

Vol. III.- 24.

370 IXDUCTITE LOGIC DISCUSSED.

qua non. The biu'glar was enabled to effectuate liis felonious
purpose of burning the dwelling by reason of the absence of the
fire-engine. How could an engine ichicJi teas ahsent exert effi-
ciency in the destruction of the house? The very amount of
this condition was, that this engine exerted absolutely no effi-
ciency, did nothing in the case.

The eiTor of Mill's doctrine appears also when it is can-ied
into psychology. Our author is, in a sense, a Xecessitarian, or,
at least, a Determinist, in his theory of Tohtion. Xow, when a
given vohtion rose, the whole set of conditions attending its
rise included a certain subjective motive, which was a complex
of a certain judgment and appetency; and a certain objective
inducement, not to say other circumstances, conditioning the
feasibihty of the voUtion. According to Mill, this whole cluster
of conditions, taken together, should be regarded as the cause
of that volition ; and one element has as much right to be re-
garded as efficient thereof as another. Then, the objective in-
ducement and the subjective motive were as really efficient, the one
as the other ? AVhere, then, was the agent's rationality and free
agency? In the objective presentation of the inducement, the
man's spontaneity had no concern, in any shape. To him, that
presentation was as absolutely necessitated as the fall of a mass
unsupj^orted. Hence, if that objective inducement was as truly
cause of his volition as his inward appetency was, his free-
agency was a delusion, and his act of soul was alisolutely neces-
sitated. But of his exercise of these attributes in that volition,
his consciousness assured him. We thus vindicate that philos-
ophy of common sense which distinguishes the real efficient from
the mere conditions of an effect. It is the presence of the former
which determines and produces the effect ; the others are merely
conditions 7'ecipient of that effect.

This review of the history of the inductive logic the reader
"s^ill find to be not a useless expenditure of his time. It has not
only traced the growth of the doctrine in its progress towards
correctness, but it has famiharized his mind to the terms and
ideas with which he has to deal in the further studv. It
has given iis opportunity to criticize and establish the proper
views on some points, hke the one last discussed, which will be
found Adtal to the development. And above all, it has disclosed.

WHAT IS INDUCTIVE DEMONSTRATION ? 371

to US the true problem wliicli yet remains to be solved, to com-
plete that development. The most important points of this re-
view to be resumed are these: that "induction" has been used
to describe three distinct processes of the mind — of which the
first is the colligating of many resembling percepts into one gen-
eral concept of the mind; the second is the inference to the
truth of the predication concerning the whole from its ascer-
tained truth concerning each and all of the individuals of that
whole ; and the third is the inference from some observed
instances to all the other unobserved instances of the class.
That the first of these processes the Avriters we have consulted
declare to be no logical process at all, but only a preliminary
thereto ; that the second was found by us perfectly valid, but also
perfectly useless, except as a compendious form for recording
knowledge already ascertained ; that the third is the useful pro-
cess of the inductive inquiry, and the only one which really ex-
tends our knowledge or our power over the previously unknown.
But the vital problem about this process is, how the ascertain-
ment of only some of the resembling instances entitles us to infer
a universal rule, which shall be held true of cases absent in space,
or future in time, from the sphere of the actual observation.
That the answer given is, our expectation of the " uniformity of
nature " is what entitles us ; and that the best of our teachers, as
Newton, Fleming, and Mill, ground that expectation in the law
of causation.

Bat that we may comprehend the difficulty and gravity of the
main problem, we must inquire whether this expectation of the
uniformity of nature is valid, and whence it is derived. Does
nature, in fact, present an aspect of uniformity ? Far from it.
A verv great part of her phenomena are unexpected and unin-
telligible to men. The unlikely and the unexpected is often that
which occurs. Whole departments of nature refuse to disclose
any orderly law to man's investigations, as the department of
meteorology refused to our fathers ; so that the results which
arise are well described to our apprehension by the phrase, " as.
fickle as the winds." That the aspect of nature is to the j^opu-
lar and unscientific observer almost boundlessly variable and
seemingly capricious, is shown by the sacrifices of the Romans
to the goddess Fortuna, whom they supposed to rule a large part

372 INDUCTIVE LOGIC DISCUSSED.

of the affairs of men, and whose throne they painted as a globe
revolving with a perpetual but irregular luliricitj. What else do
we mean by our emphatic confessions of our blindness to the
future, than that the evolutions of nature are endlessly variable
to our apprehension ; and for that reason baffle our foresight ?
See Mill, Chap. XXI : " It is not true, as a matter of fact, that
mankind have always believed that all the successions of events
were uniform and according to fixed laws. The Greek philoso-
phers, not even excepting Aiistotle, recognized Chance and SjDon-
taneity as among the agents of nature," etc., etc. So, Baden
Powell, Essay on tJie Inductive Philosophy, pp. 98-100. No
writer has made more impressive statements of this uncertainty
of the aspects of nature than that idolater of the inductive sci-
ences, Auguste Comte. His Philosophie Positive saj^s of her
energies : " Their multiplicity renders the effects as irregularly
variable as if every cause had failed to be subjected to any pre-
cise condition. It is only where natural causes work in their
greatest simplicity and smallest number, that any appearance of
invariable order is ob\dous to the common observer As soon as
the number of concurring or competing causes becomes larger,
and the combinations more intricate, the resultant phenomena
begin to wear to us the as]3ect of a disorder which obeys no
regular law whatever. " Such is Comte's confession. This sug-
gests the question. What, then, authorized the observer to pos-
tulate this proposition, that "nature is uniform"? Shall it be
said that he is authorized to do so because his inductions have
led him to detect latent laws of order amidst nature's seeming
confusions? But the postulate of nature's uniformity was, as it
appears, necessary to his first inductions. Whence did he de-
rive it at the beginning ? Is his induction all reasoning in a
circle ? The same philosopher has also pointed out this general
fact, that the departments of nature, in which her causes are
few and simple, and her movements therefore uniform, are the
very ones which are farthest from man and from his control;
while in those departments which are nearest to him, which
most concern him, and which it is most desirable for him to con-
trol, causations are most innumerable and complicated, and all
principle of uniform order most latent. The heavenly bodies
move in orbits, under the operation of two forces only ; and

•WHAT IS INDUCTIVE DEMONSTRATION? 373

lience tlieir movements are manifestly regular, intelligible, and
capable of exact prediction. Astronomy is tlie most exact of
tlie physical sciences. But these stars are the farthest bodies
from us, and the ones over which we can have absolutely no
control. As we approach nearer to our human interests and per-
sons, natural causations become more numerous and intricate.
The chemistry which governs in the composition of our food and
medicines, presents us with physical energies much more numer-
ous and subtile than the two forces, centrifugal and centripetal ;
and in that science results are far less regular and capable of
prediction by us, just as they are nearer and more important to
us. But when we come still nearer to the vital energies
which govern our health, disease, pain, or ease and death, there
the appearance of uniformity is least, and the fortuity seemingly
greatest. No man " knoweth what a day may bring forth. "
How, then, are we warranted to set out with this assumption of
the "uniformity of nature"? How is it that we claim to account
for her actual complications and apparent fortuities, thus embar-
rassing us at every turn, by our hypothesis of the inter-actings
of latent laivs ; when the very question is, whether these irreg-
ularities do not refute the very idea of permanent law in her
realm ?

If it be urged that there are regularities amidst the seeming
fortuities of nature, and that induction may proceed from these
regularly recurrent instances, we shall be met with another diffi-
culty. It is demonstrable that no amount of mere regvilarity in
a recurring sequence can amount to demonstration that the same
sequence will recur in the future. The customary apprehension
of the inductive argument seems to be thus : that if a given phe-
notnenon be actually observed to go immediately before another
a sufficient numher of times, this justifies the postulating of a
regular law. And such, in fact, is the amount of most of the so-
called scientific observation and argument. If one asks. How
many observations of the same recurring sequence are sufficient
to reveal, and thus to prove, a law ; no consistent answer is given
to us. And let it be supposed that any answer whatsoever were
given us — as that fifty or five hundred entirely agreeing in-
stances wovild be sufficient to establish a law — then we must ask,
^hat is there different in the last crowning instance, say tho

374 INDUCTIVE LOGIC DISCUSSED.

five-hundrecltli, wliich makes it conclusive of a law, wlien the
four liunclred and ninety-nine were not ? The argument was be-
gun on the assumption that they were to be all agreeing instances ;
for the disagreeing instances would rather cross and contradict
the induction than strengthen it. And yet this five-hundredth
must have something in it different from the four hundred and
ninety-ninth, for that is conclusive where this was not. To this
difficulty also we get no consistent answer.

In truth, the inquiry has proceeded far enough among the in-
ductive logicians to prove thus much, absolutely, that this spe-
cies of induction, which does no more than count up agreeing
instances of sequence, can never be a demonstration. Bacon
calls it the " Inductio jper eiiumerationein simplicemr His ver-
dict against its validity may be found in the JS^oviiin Organuin,
L. I., Apothegm 105 : "Some other form of induction than has
been hitherto in use, must be excogitated in establishing an
axiom " (general principle). "And this is necessary, not only
for discovering and proving what they call Jirct truths, but also
the lesser and the mediate axioms ; in fine, all axioms. For an
induction which proceedeth by simple enumeration, is a puerile
affair, and gives a precarious conclusion, and is liable to j)eril
from a contradictory instance ; and oftentimes it pronounces from
fewer instances than is meet, and only from such as lie readiest at
hand." So Mill (Book III., Chap. III., § 2) : " To an inhabitant
of Central Africa, fifty years ago, no fact probably appeared to
rest on more uniform experience than this, that all human be-
ings are black. To Europeans, not many years ago, the proj)o-
sition, all swans are white, appeared an equally unequivocal
instance of uniformity in the course of nature. Further expe-
rience has proved to both that they were mistaken." (See also
Chap. XXL, Yol. II., p. 101.) So speak aU the thoughtful wri-
ters. The invalidity of such induction is also proved by familiar
examples. Experience observes the invariable death of our fel-
low-men. We confidently expect all living men, including our-
selves, mil die. Experience has, with equal certainty, sliOAvn
us night always preceding day within the limits of twenty-four
hours ; for we live between the arctic circles. But no man
dreams that night or darkness causes the day; and if he con-
cluded that the sequence must hold as he has seen it, he would

WHAT IS INDUCTIVE DEMONSTEATION ? 375

he refuted bj the first winter within the arctic circle. Every
man who rises early enough, hears the cock crow invariably
before the dawn ; no man infers that the cock's crowing causes
•dawn, or must necessarily precede it. Babbage's calculating
machine presented a curious refutation of this species of induc-
iion. Its machinery could be so adjusted by the maker as to
present to the eye a certain series of numbers, increasing by a
given law, and this was continued through instances so numer-
ous as to weary the spectator. Did he now conclude that these
numerous agreeing instances revealed to him the necessary law
of the machine ? He was speedily refuted by seeing it change
the law of the series by its own automatic action.

But does not such an enumeration of agreeing instances teach
anything? Tfe reply that it does raise a probability of a law
which may be found to regulate the future rise of similar in-
stances. The more numerous the agreeing instances summed
up, the more this probability will usually grow; and when, by
our own observation and the testimony of our fellow-men, the
agreeing instances become exceedingly numerous, and none of
a contradictory character appear, the probability may mount
towards a virtual certainty. The ground of this will appear
when we have advanced further into the discussion. It must
also be conceded that inferences which have only probability,
may be of much practical value in common life, and serve a cer-
tain purpose even in the proceedings of science. Bishop Butler
has taught us that, to a great extent, probability is the guide of
life. Junctures often arise when it is not only man's wisdom,
but his clear duty, to act upon only probable anticipations of re-
sults. In science, also, these imperfect inductions have their
use, which is this, to guide to some probable but only provi-
sional hypothesis, which is taken only as a guide to experiments
that are made for the conclusive investigation of nature. What
we observe, then, of this induction by mere enumeration of agree-
ing instances is, that it is not useless, but it can never give de-
monstrated tniths. But science requires, in its final results,
complete demonstration.

Not a few logicians, among whom Hamilton is to be num-
bered, in view of this imperfection in the mere induction from the
many to the all, have roundly declared that induction can never

376 INDUCTIYE LOGIC DISCUSSED.

give more tlian probable eyidence of its laws. {Logic, Lecture
32nd, end.) He asserts that it is impossible for it to teacli, like
the deductive syllogism, any necessary laws of thought or of
nature! Must we concede this? Is the problem, the gravity of
which was indicated, indeed hopeless? Must we admit that all
the sciences of induction, and all the practical rules of life, which
are virtually also inductive, are forever imcertain, presenting us
only probabilities, and remaining but plausilile hypotheses which
await the probable or possible refutation from wider investiga-
tions? This we cannot beheve. We claim a demonstrative
force for this species of evidence, when it is properly con-
structed. We must substantiate such a view, or else candidly
surrender the proud claim and name of science for our opinions
upon all the natural j)^f^^f^omena. Keal demonstration cannot
be grounded in uncertainties, however much they be multi-
pHed. They can only be grounded, as Mill has most truly de-
clared,— however inconsistently for his oa^ti logic — in necessary
truths. Moreover, the common sense of mankind rejects the
conclusion tnat all its inductions are only probable. Some of
them we know to be certain, and experience never fails to con-
firm their certainty. The question, then, recurs, which is the
great problem of this species of logic : How does the inference
seemingly made from the some or the many to the all, become
vahd for the all?

II.

THE NATURE OF PHYSICAL CAUSES AND THEIR
INDUCTION.

In our previous sketch of the history of Inductive Reason-
ings, we found that the chief (and the difficult) question, the
great problem of this species of logic, which continually emerged,
was this : How does the inference seemingly made from the
some, or the many, to the all, become vaUd for the all ?

The settlement of this, as of the other fundamental doctrines
of logic, must proceed upon right postulates as to psychology,
and especially as to its highest branch, the original ]30wers of
the reason. In our criticism of the Sensualistic Philosophy of

NATUEE OF PHYSIC.VL CAUSES. 377

the Xineteenth Century, a parallel questiou as to tlie Deductive
Logic is considered (see pp. 265-272). That questiou was the
old one between the assailants and defenders of the utility and
fiiiitfulness of the syllogism, with which the students of philos-
ophy are acquainted. The followers of Locke, from his day to
ours, haye argued that, since a syllogism which concludes more
in its third proposition than is predicated in its major premise,
is confessedly faulty, all such reasonings must inevitably be
either sophisms, or worthless, only teaching us what we must
have known before in order to state our premise. Yet we saw
Mill, after echoing this objection, confessing, what all men's
common sense must concede, that the syllogism is the full ex-
pression to which all deductive reasoning is reduced. How
was this paradox to be solved ? It was shown that the solution
is in recognizing the a j^rwri necessary and universal judgments
of the reason. Admit that the mind is entitled to other judg-
ments than the empirical, the intuitive namely, and that they
are universal, then the synthesis of truths becomes a valid and
fruitful source of new knowledge.

A similar resort to the doctrines of a true psychology must be
made, again, to explain the Inductive Logic. This necessity has
been disclaimed, on the ground that logic is a critical art, whose
whole and onh- business is to test the validity, not of the con-
tents, but of the forms of our elenchtic thought. This might be
admitted ; and yet it would remain true that these processes,
which it is the business of logic to criticize, are psychological
processes, and that the critical acts are also psychological pro-
cesses. Moreover, as in the world of matter, the substance
determines the form, so in the realm of thought, it is the quahty
of the contents of thought which determines the logical frame-
work. The science of logic, therefore, must be grounded in a
correct psychology.

That psychology must not be the sensationalist. We must
hold that the mind has original powers of judging a lyriorl neces-
sary truths ; powers which, although they may be awakened to
exercise on occasion of some empirical perception, yet owe the
validity of the judgments formed, not to sense-perception, but to
the mind's own constitutive laws. This, then, is the metaphysi-
cal doctrine assumed as the basis of this discussion : that while

378 INDUCTIVE LOGIC DISCUSSED.

tlie senses alone give us our individual idea of objective things,
it is the original power of the reason which gives us our uni-
versal necessary judgments about objective things and their re-
lations ; and these same powers furnish the forms according to
which we connect them into general knowledge. Those neces-
sary and universal truths are primitive judgments, intuitively
seen to be tiiie ; and not dependent for their authority upon the
confirmation of observed instances, be they many or few. For
these first truths and laws of the reason must be, in their order
of production (though not in their date), prior to the observa-
tions of the senses and to all deductions therefrom, because they
are necessary to construe the individual perceptions intelligibly,
and to connect them for any purposes of reasoning. But it is
our purpose here to postulate, and not to argue, this view of the
mind's powers. For the latter, the reader must be referred to
the work mentioned above [Sensiialistic Philosojyliy of the JTiyie-
teentli Century fon-i-idered, Chaps. X. and XL).

We have seen J. S. Mill's correct jjosition, that the lai'' of
causation is the foundation of every inductive demonstration.
We have also seen his inconsistent assertion, that our behef in
this law is the result of an induction fi'om experience. We have
proved, on the contrary, that it is a necessary intuition of the
reason. Whenever we observe a ])henomenoii or a new existence,
the law of the reason ensures our assigning for it an adequate
cause. It is impossible for us to think a thing or event as aris-
ing out of nothing. To think it as producing itself, would be the
contradiction of thinking it acted before it existed. Xor can we
avoid ascribing to the cause 2)ov'er efficient of the effect. The
old objection, that we have no right to assume anything else than
what the senses observe, a regular or uniform sequence between
a cei*tain antecedent and a certain consequent, is worthless to
any one who has learned the true doctrine : that the reason is
itself a source, and not a mere passive recipient, of cognitions.
As, when sense-j^erception gives us only a cluster of properties
belonging to body, the reason must supply the sujDerseusuous no-
tion of substance underlying and sustaining them, so when the
senses perceive a cause preceding its effect, the reason compels
us to supply the rational notion of efficient power in the cause.
It is this, and this alone, which enables and quahfies the ante-

NATURE OF PHYSICUj CAUSES. 379

•cedent to be catise. And this power must be thought as efficient
-of the effect. This judgment involves the further belief that,
wherever the cause is present, under the same conditions, the
efficiency of its power ensures the same effect. Such is obvi-
ously the nature of the necessary judgment : " Same causes,
same effects." A simple examination of our consciousness con-
vinces us that our rational notion of substance involves the as-
surance of its continuity of being and permanency. As the rise
of that substance ex, nihilo, without any cause, is a proposition
which cannot be rationally thought, so the cessation of that sub-
stance's continuity of being, or its return into nihil without a
cause efficient of its destruction, is equally incredible. This in-
tuitive confidence in the permanency of true substance, as thus
defined, is not an inference from any observations, but a phase
of the intuition, a source and premise of all our reasonings about
substances ; and a regulative law for construing every observa-
tion experiences give us about them. So we have a similar in-
tuitive confidence in the persistency and uniformity of power,
wherever it inheres. So long as power qualifies any being, it is,
in its own nature, efficient of the same effect which it is once seen
to produce. If we see the agent and the recipient of the effect
again present, and do not witness the rise of the same effect,
we intuitively and necessarily believe that some other jDOwer,
whether visible or invisible, is intervening to modify or counter-
act the known power. This is the explanation of our belief in
the " uniformity of nature " when the belief is legitimate. Na-
ture is uniform just so far as the same powers are present, and
her uniformities are nothing but the necessary results of the
permanency of substances and powers. What we call laws of
nature are only the regular methods of the actions of natural
powers. We believe in those laws, only because we intuitively
judge that each power or energy is, imder the same circum-
stances, efficient of the same effects.

But this conception of regular laws in nature implies an as-
surance not only of the permanency of substances, biit of their
essential properties. That substances have two classes of pro-
perties, distinguished as attAhiita and accidentia^ is obvious ; and
it is according to their permanency or mutability that we ascriba
a quality to the one class or the other. How is it that we ara

380 INDUCTIVE LOGIC DISCUSSED.

autliorized to entertain this assurance of tlie permanency of es-
sential properties ? The answer is, because these lyt'operties make
tliemselves knoion to our reason as powers. If we reflect, we see
that what we call a property of a body is only revealed to ns
by its emission of a power, producing an efl^ect either on some
other body, or on our own percipient senses, and through them
on our own spirits. This truth has been seen by Dr. McCosh,
for instance (in his Divine Government, Physical and Moral, p.
78). The evidence assigned for the proposition seems inade-
quate : that we observe no body acts on itself, but only on an-
other body in a certain relation to itself. The same writer, very
singularly, excepts from his assertion those properties which
affect our senses. Of all the properties of external things, he
should have said that those which affect our senses directly, are
most certainly powers. For it is only by some effect on our
senses, propagating a perception, that we learn an effect has
been produced on another bod}-. What is perception? How
do we convince ourselves of the reality of the external world?
Consciousness, a subjective faculty, can of course only testify to
the subjective part of the perceptive function. What, then, is
the rational ground of that judgment of relation which, as we
know, we all make between the perceptive cognition and the
external source? Reflection convinces us that this ground is in
the necessary and intuitive judgment of cause. We are conscious
of a perception ; we are also conscious we did not affect
ourselves with it. But there can be no effect without a
cause ; therefore the object perceived must be a reality. It
is frequently said that we derive, or at least we first see, the
rational notion of power and efiiciency in our own conscious
volition ; that we are conscious of the will to emit efficiency ; that
we see the effect, and that we thus form the notion of efficient
power in cause. We have no disposition to dispute the fact
that this may be one of the occasions upon which the reason
presents her intuitive notion of power. But, whatever the
change which she may observe, constituting a ney^ phenomenon
or state, whether in the subjective or objective sphere, she must
supply the notion of cause and of efficient power. For the
necessary law of her thinking is, ex nihilo nihil. The new effect
could not have been, except there had preceded a sufficient

NATUEE OF PHYSICAL CAUSES. 381

cause. But when is cause sufficient? Only when it possesses
power efficient of the new change.

Now, then, the first cognition which the mind can have of any
objective thing, is through exjyerienclng an effect therefrom. Is
it not obvious, thence, that what we call properties of things are
only known to its as powers f They are, simply, what are able to
affect MS with the perceptions. And since every perception is
an effect, we only learn that any body has the property (or
power) of affecting another body by experiencing its power of
affecting us. Hence, we should say that we know the proper-
ties of bodies which affect our senses as powers primarily ; and
those which we see affecting other bodies we know as also
powers secondarily. Instead of saying that properties are
powers, it would be more correct to say that powers are the
only true properties. The notion of power is in order to the
idea of propei"ty. Here, then, is the ground on which we expect
a permanenc}' in any essential property, as immutable as that
which we intuitively ascribe to substance; it is because "the
same causes produce the same effects."

But there are properties which are not permanent, and yet
they can produce effects on us and on other bodies. The dis-
tinction of "attributes" and "accidents" made by the scholas-
tics is just. The sohdity of congealed water, for instance, is cer-
tainly not an essential property of that substance ; yet it has
power to affect our tactual sense, and it also has a ^aower of im-
j)act on other bodies Avhicli the liquid has not. Here is an ap-
parent inconsistency — that we should infer the permanency of
essential properties from the fact that they are causes ; that the
same causes produce the same effects — and yet concede power
to properties which are not permanent. But the inconsistency
is only seeming. The explanation is, that the change or state
which was just now an effect may in turn become a cause, and
may not only depend on its cause, but have another effect de-
pending on it. While its own prior cause propagates it, it may
also propagate its effect; with the suspension of the action of
its cause, it and its effect cease. The original cause has thus its
progeny, not only of the first, but of the second and subsequent
generations. Now, what is an ^^acciclens" a property not per-
manent, except a mutable effect of some other property which

382 INDUCTIVE LOGIC DISCUSSED.

is a permanent cause ? — mutable, because, wliile the power of
essential property lias no change, the conditions for its action
may change. While the more original power or powers of the
essential property is acting, its effect, the accidental property,
is propagated ; and this in turn may become cause, so long as it
subsists. Thus, solidity is not an essential property of water,
for this substance often exists uucougealed ; the solidity is the
result of a molecular energy which is an essential property in
the substance, and which is allowed to come into action by the
departure of the caloric out of it. To understand this truth, w^e
must avail ourselves of the old distinction between active and
passive powers. Essential projjerties are active powers. Acci-
dental properties are the results of passive powers in the bodies
which exhibit them ; of susceptibilities or powers of recipiency,
by means of which the more original powers of the essential
properties, either simple or combined, show through and give
themselves these new and mutable expressions.

We remark, again, that it is obvious the permanency of the
properties which we predicate of a class, or of a general term
by which we name it, is essential to the validity of all general
and scientific propositions. This, to the logician, needs no argu-
ing. Hence it follows that it is all-important we shall be able
to distinguish, in classifying, between permanent or essential
properties and ''accidentia^ How do we effect this? Here the
rule quoted from Sir Isaac Newton comes to our aid. If we find
that a given property is always present whenever the body is
present, and that it is not affected with increment or diminution,
whatever other effects are wrought on the body, we may safely
conclude that it is an essential property. This rule should be
qualified by the following admission : It may be that the energy
wdiich we invariably see expressing itself through this property
is not the original energy, but is itself the next effect of a la-
tent and undetected energy. If this were surely discovered, we
should feel constrained to carry back the name and title of es-
sential property to that original energy. For instance,' we have
been accustomed to regard caloric as an original energy in mat-
ter. Should it be discovered that caloric is itself a result of a
peculiar molecular motion in matter, or in some latent medium,
w'e must give the name of original energy to that hitherto

NATURE OF PHYSICAL CAUSES. 383

undetected cause. This, we suppose, Newton would have freely
conceded. But this concession does not practically derange
our inductive conclusions. For if there is the latent energy, and
yet it always expresses itself through the known property, and
if it is its necessary law to do so, any practical conclusion from
it is as solid as though the latent cause had been seen. "We are,
in fact, reasoning from it, while we only leave it anonymous.
But, it may be asked, does the fact that a body always exhibits
a certain property, as often as loe have observed it, prove that
property to be essential, and therefore permanent? Is not this
the defective induction J96r enxiiiierationem shnj^llcemf We con-
cede that it is nothing more. Hence it is all-important that we
employ the other part of Newton's rule also, that upon frequent
observations we see the property takes no increment or decrease,
whatever changes are made upon the body. If the property
stands that test, it is essential. But the application of this test
is, as we shall see in the subsequent discussion, but an employ-
ment of the canon of " corresponding variations," one of the
methods of induction by which a vaUd is distinguished from an
invahd inference. It may be asked, Does the process of induct-
ive reasoning begin so far back in our thinking, in the very form-
ation of our concepts, as well as in deducing from them ? We
answer. Yes ; the rational function must come into play, not onh'
at an early stage of our processes of logical thought, but along
with their very beginning. This is the very principle of true
metaphysics.

We shall see that this is not the only case of inductive infer-
ence, which takes place in the ver}^ processes of generalization.
It has been too long and too heedlessly repeated, that the gen-
eralizations which give us our general concepts are j^rcZ/wiew^;'?/
to our processes of inference, and therefore cannot be inferen-
tial. Dugald Stewart, in repeating this statement, seems to have
a view of its inaccuracy, for he immediately qualifies it by re-
marking that, while a given inferential process has no concern
with the question whence or how the premises employed came,
but only with the question whether they are correctly related ;
yet oue or more of these premises may be itself an inference
from a previous illation. This is the vital concession. A gen-
eral proposition cannot be correctly affirmed, save of general

384 INDUCTIVE LOGIC DISCUSSED.

terms. Hence it is also essential that tlie concepts named in
tliose general terms be correctly framed. The question of their
correctness may require to be settled by a logical process. Let
it be considered now, that when we frame a general term, it
must be understood to connote all the properties essential to
the species. For instance, the general term horse must be held
to signify each and eyery property essential to that species of
quadrupeds. Let us suppose that, in a place new and strange
to us, as the Shetland Isles, we meet \nt\i an indiyidual quad-
ruped, which we wish to classify. We see that, along with some
quite striking differences, as of size and such like, it has several
of the more obvious qualities of the horse species. May we refer
it to that species ? On the one hand, unless this individual quad-
ruped has all and each of the properties essential to the species
horse, we are not authorized to class it there. On the other
hand, we haA'e not seen all the possible properties of the Shet-
land individual : for instance, we have not dissected it ; we have
not yet satisfied ourselves, ocularly, that it may not be a rumi-
nant, or that it may not present specific differences in its osteol-
ogy. Yet we refer it to the species horse. It is obvious that in
doing this, we make an induction, and it is a:i induction from a
part to the whole. We know by observation that the individual
has some of the equine properties ; we infer that it has the rest
of the essential properties. But all logicians agree that the in-
duction from some to all is not necessarily valid. Are our gen-
eral concepts themselves, then, only partially correct? How
much uncertainty must not this throw over all our general rea-
sonings ? If we are not certain that a given thing really belongs
to its class, we cannot predicate certainly about it what we have
l^roved concerning the class.

Now, on this question, it ma}^ be remarked, first, that our re-
ferences of individual things to their classes are often support-
ed by only probable evidence, or incomplete inductions. And,
therefore, our propositions, when applied to tliose indi\dduals,
have only jjrobable truth. But in practical life, probabilities
are far from valueless; if they are not universally accurate as
guides of our action, they are generally so. But for the con-
struction of a science, they do not suffice, for science claims
truth, and not mere probability. Second, we all practice, in our

NATURE OF PHYSICAL CAUSES. 385

customarj generalizations, certain mental expedients to guard
ourselves against erroneous classifications; expedients which we
learn bj experience, and whicli are, in fact, approximate uses of
logical canons of induction, although we have not distinctly
analyzed and explained to ourselves the rules which we virtu-
ally employ and trust. This is that practical sagacity which
the mind acquires in the j)rocess of its own self-education. By
its help we greatly diminish the probabilities of error in our
generalizations. This may be explained by the instance already
mentioned. An inexperienced child and a shrewd, observing
adult, neither of whom is a trained logician or natural histo-
rian, see for the first time the Shetland pony. The child, im-
pressed by the puny size, shaggy coat, and bushy fetlocks of
the quadruped, may exclaim that it cannot be a horse. The
experience of the man tells him that these pecuHar appearances
may be but accidentia of the Shetland variety, striking as they
are, and he at once directs his observation to other characteris-
tics in the little animal, which convince him that it is, neverthe-
less, a true horse. The more discriminative marks, the uncloven
hoof, the character and number of the teeth, the relations of
the limbs to each other, furnish him with the inference that the
rest of the equine properties would all be found in it, if it were
thoroughly dissected. Third, this observer, although not a nat-
uralist, makes a practical application of a general principle to
guide his induction. His reason has told him that the ends of
nature cannot but dictate morphologic laws, which ensure the
associating of certain characters together, so that where some
of them are seen, the rest may be safely inferred. He does not
call himself a philosopher; he does not name those ends "final
causes." But, none the less, his reason has the partial guidance
of the universal principle. He does, semi-consciously, a similar
thing to that which Cuvier did, when he argued that no quadru-
ped having graminivorous teeth would ever be found with claws
on its feet, because the final cause of the Creator would never
lead him to pro^dde an animal with the instruments for seizing
prey, which was ordained, in other parts of its structure, to live
without prey. And when the philosophic naturalist's classifica-
tions are made with scientific certainty, by inferring the whole
number of essential properties from the knowledge of a part of

Vol.. Ill— 25.

386 INDUCTIVE LOGIC DISCUSSED.

them, it is because he has converted the invalid induction into
a vahd one by the help of a necessary principle which he makes-
his major premise.

Powers and Properties Permanent.

But it is time we had returned to another point in our ex-
planation. If essential properties are powers, and if, as such,
thev must be permanent, why are not their effects continuous?
Whereas, it is notorious that properties are not always active in
the production of effects. A property, like the attractive energy
of a loadstone, may remain for ages without effecting the actual
motion towards itself of the bit of iron which lies in an adjacent
drawer of the cabinet. This demands explanation at our hands.
The explanation is, that properties of created things are causes
only potentially ; in themselves only powers in jyosse. In order
for the effluence of the actual power, a certain relation or rela-
tions must be established between the thing possessing the pro-
perty and another thing. Thus, the loadstone is always poten-
tially an attractor of iron ; but a certain proximity must be es-
tablished, in order for' the effect, motion, to take place. Such
instances may be multiplied until we convince ourselves that
the essential condition for all physical effects is the instituting
of some particular relation between two bodies. Not until the
appropriate relation is instituted is the potentiality of the causal
property released so as to become an actual power. Until then
the property remains quiescent. If this doctrine is correct, the
action of an elastic spring held in a state of compression is the
parallel to the powers of natural things. The elasticity is doubt-
less in the compressed spring all the time, and expresses itself
in a steady pressure upon the bolt or key which holds it. Let
that bolt be withdrawn, and the elasticity is released, and pro-
duces the visible motion of the body propelled by the spring,
hitherto quiescent. The condition of the action of every natural
property is, then, its release from some restraining energy ; the
condition of the cessation of action is the restoration of that re-
straint. Is not this strictly conformed with the recognized re-
lation in science between statics and dynamics, action and re-
action ?

The instances of the beginning and cessation of effects which

NATUEE OF PHYSICAL CAUSES. 387

we are best able to read seem to be conformed to this view.
The rise of the mercury iu the tube of the barometer is ascribed
to the counterpoising pressure of the atmosphere. This is a
force which reallj exists perpetually, but it cannot produce this
particular effect until a counteracting force is taken away from
the top of the column of mercury. As soon as this is removed,
the mercury rises in its tube ; Avhen it is replaced, the atmos-
phere is no longer able to support the column; but the atmos-
phere has not lost a jjarticle of its Aveight. xA.gain, chemical
afl&nities are deprived of manj- of their customary effects when
organized bodies are presented to them. This is because there
is another energy in the organism, the vital energy. Just so
soon as this departs, the carbon, water, and nitrogen of the or-
ganism yield to the chemical energies, like other carbon, water,
and nitrogen. Those energies are there, but cannot work "un-
til that which letteth is taken out of the May."

This theory may be no more, as yet, than a probable hypothe-
sis. But it substitutes another theory which has recently grown
into much favor, and which is also only a plausible hypothesis.
That is the theory of "the equivalency and transformation of
energy." The conclusion from this doctrine, which is aimed at,
is, that there is really but one kind of energy in the material
universe ; that as the caloric, for instance, which disappears from
the sensible to the latent state in the volatilization of water into
steam, is transformed into an equivalent amount of elasticity in
that steam, so caloric and elasticity are but two forms of the
same energy. Now, much is yet lacking before this supposition
is proved. The instances in which a body may be infused with
a high degree of one form of energy, and then again deprived of
it, while another energy in the same body remains constant, seem
fatal to the inference that those energies are equivalent and trans-
formable. Thus, a mass of metal may be greatly heated, and
then refrigerated, while its gravity remains unchanged. Gravity,
at least, then, cannot be thus correlated to caloric. The same
argument seems to hold of all jjarallel cases.

Another seemingly fatal objection to the theory of the " equiva-
lency and transformation of energy " has been urged by Clausius.
What transformation and reflection of a force can take place,
which is emitted on the exterior limit of the universe, and on £U

388 im)ucTivE logic discussed.

line of action awaj from existing bodies? Let the energy be, for
instance, tliat of lieat or liglit. Its reflection back into the uni-
verse in the form of the same, or of a transformed energy, would
appear equally impossible, since nothing exists, outside the uni-
verse, to be the medium of its reception or reflection. Hence, it
would seem that, as a wedge of heated iron jjlaced in a winter
atmosjDhere must continuously lose its caloric until as cold as
the surrounding medium, so a universe, a system of bodies ener-
gized under natural laws, must continually difluse its energies
until its motions declined into universal quiescence. The fa-
vorite corollar}' of tlie theory under debate is : the permanency
and equality of the aggregates of cosmic forces through all time.
But this corollary, we here see, cannot be true on that hypothe-
sis. Yet, if it be not true, how shall the physicist maintain his
fundamental position, the uniformity of nature? The alterna-
tive hypothesis we suggest solves the difficulty. The powers of
nature are not all equivalent and transformable the one into the
other. But the powers of nature are permanent ; because true
2)Owers are essential properties, and essential properties are
permanent. The /or/ns of matter change; but the matter, whose
are the essential properties, is indestructible.

But the only a pr^'ori argument advanced for the new theory,
so far as we are informed, is this : That reason forbids us to sup-
pose that a power which we see now existing and active, can
anon, upon the completion of its effect, be annihilated and pass .
into nonentity. It has disappeared in that form ; but they argue,
it cannot be extinct. Hence, they conclude that it has reap-
peared in the form of its effect. There has been, not an anni-
hilation, but a transformation of the energy. Xow, this arii;u-
ment seems wholly neutralized b}* the view which we have sug-
gested.

Grant that reason requires our believing in the permanency of
powers, as much as of substances; this energy which we see
acting temporarily, has not gone into its effect, but has retired
into potentiaHty in the matter which it inhabits. The condi-
tions of its release have terminated ; it is again remanded from
its active to its potential state. The same energy is in matter
stiU, in the form of essential, permanent property ; and is again
able to emit the same power and propagate a similar effect,

NATURE OP PHYSICAL CAUSES. 389

whenever the conditions of release take place again. This
theory of power, then, instead of reducing all the energies of
nature to a single one, recognizes as many distinct kinds of en-
ergy in material things, as there are certainly distinct and essen-
tial properties in matter. We may not have concluded accu-
rately as to which properties are really distinct and essential.
We may be mistaking two properties for essential ones, which
will turn out to be two effects of some more latent essential pro-
perty of matter. We may find that what we call heat, light, and
electricity are but three phases of some one molecular energy,
transformable into these equivalent effects. But we return to the
more natural and obvious theory of Newton and his great con-
temporaries, that matter has more than one real, essential pro-
perty, and more than one power. This theory of power is
encumbered with none of the difficulties besetting the newer
one. It coheres mth the rational view which, as we have seen,
compels us to regard essential properties of substances as no-
thing else than powers hi posse, because we have cognition of
them only as we see them producing effects.

The Aim of Eeal Induction.
But the main use of the inductive logic is to enable us to an-
ticipate nature. Our beneficial power over her can only be
gained by learning her ways. To be able to produce the given
effect we desire, we must know the natural law under which that
effect arises. Bacon has tersely expressed this truth at the be-
ginning of his Novum Orgaraim. "Human knowledge and power
coincide, because ignorance of the cause maketh the effect to
fail. For Nature is only conquered by obeying her ; and that
which in our contemplation hath the aspect of Cause, in our
working hath the aspect of Rule." The thing we need to do is
to predict what sequent will certainly follow such or such an an-
tecedent. For only thus can we know these two things, the
knowing of which constitutes all practical wisdom : how to pro-
duce the effect we desire, and how to foresee what shall befall
us. Our first impulse is to attempt to learn nature's secret, by
the mere observation and summing up of what we see occurring,
with the circumstances of the occurrences. But when we have
done this, and recorded our enumerations, experience speedily

390 INDUCTIVE LOGIC DISCUSSED.

teaches us that we cannot jet certain!}- interpret and predict
nature, since the same antecedents may not be relied on always
to bring in the same sequents. Sometimes they may, and often-
times they may not. The problem, then, is to distinguish be-
tween those observed sequences which certainly will hold in the
future, and those which will not. And heticeen the antecedent and
consequent of the form ei' sort, there must he known to he a necessary
tie ; for it is self-evident that only a necessary tie can ensure the
certain recui^ence of the second after the first. But it is equally
evident, both to the human reason and experience, that nature
has no necessary tie between her events, except that of efficient
cause. Hence it appears that the sole remaining j^^'ohlem of in-
duction is to distinguish the causal sequences we observe, from the
accidental. Whenever we see what we term an effect, a change,
a newly beginning action or state, this necessary law of the rea-
son assures us that it had its cause. Had not that cause been
efficient of that effect, it would not have been true cause It
must, then, have communicated power. That power will always
be efficient of the same effect, when it acts under the same con-
ditions. Hence, when we have truly discriminated the cause
from the mere antecedent, the projyter hoc from thejtx;*/ hoc, we
have found therein a certain and invariable law of nature. We
have read nature's secret. We are now enabled to predict her
future actions; and so far as we can procure the presence of the
discovered cause and conditions, we can command nature, and
produce the effects we desire. This, and this alone, is inductive
demonstration. This position is substantiated also by the au-
thority of the three most intelligent expounders of the inductive
logic, whom we have quoted : by that of Lord Bacon, cited on
p. 354; b}' that of Sir Isaac Newton, cited in his second Rule, on
p. 356 ; and by that of Mr. Mill, p. 366. (See Southern Presbyte-
rian Review for January.)

He who ponders the last argument thoroughly, will see that
there is no consistent explanation of the inductive demonstration
possible, upon the plan of Mr. Hume's metaphysics. Let the a
priori rational notion of efficient cause and power be discarded ;
let our judgment of cause be reduced to the mere observation of
invariable sequence, without any supersensuous tie between an-
tecedent and consequent suppHed by the law of reason ; let the

NATUEE OF PHYSICAL CAUSES. 391

vain distinction between efficient cause and physical cause be
established, and the aim of science restricted to the inquiry for
the physical cause, while the search after the efficient cause is
discarded ; and let the rational distinction between true cause
and conditio sine qua non be obliterated ; then, obviously, no
necessary truth remains, from which any argumentative process
can be constructed, to lift any series of observations above the
uncertain level of an inchictio ennnierationis sirajylicis. Mr. Mill
himself, while making the fatal denials envimerated above, is
driven by the force of truth to say that such necessary, universal
truth must be introduced from some whither, in order to give to
induction the solid character of science. Whence can it be ob-
tained, if not from the intuitive judgment of efficient cause ?
Experience, without this, only tells us that this has come after
that a great many times. But the number of instances in which
experience has not been, and will not be, able to observe whether
the same consequent comes after that antecedent, is infinitely
greater than the number of instances which have been experi-
mentally observed. Hence we can never conclude by that method,
whether the sequence we observe is the certain one in the future.
The introductory citations showed the reader how the writers on
this branch of logic waver and confuse and contradict each
other. Is not the reason now disclosed, — that so many of them
have disdained the guidance of correct metaphysics ?

The reader is now brought to the proper point of view to un-
derstand why the induction from a mere enumeration of agree-
ing instances can never rise above probability ; and why it does,
as we admit, raise a probable expectation of recurrence in the
future. So far as the ohserved presence of a given antecedent
seemingly next hefore the consequent raises the prohahilitij that we
see in that antecedent the true efficient cause, just so far have we
probable evidence that the consequent wall follow it in future.
Now, inasmuch as our rational intuition tells us that cause always
immediately precedes effect, ihe pheno^nenon which is seemingly
next before another may be in many cases taken for the nearest
antecedent, and, therefore, the cause. But even this rule of
probability is liable to many exceptions, which we are taught to .
make by our practical sagacity. We have invariably seen dark-
ness preceding dawn ; and that immediately. But we have never

392 INDUCTIVE LOGIC DISCUSSED.

felt the least iuclinecl to see tlie faintest jDrobabilitj therein, that
the darkness was the cause of the dawn. Why not? Because
our observation showed us a species of heterogeneity between,
the two events, which made us disinclined to look for the prob-
able, or even the possible, cause of light in darkness. But in
many other cases, as, when the tides were seen always to follow
the rise of the moon to the meridian, the probability that the
moon's coming was the true cause appeared; and as soon as
Newton's theory of mutual attraction was stated, that proba-
bility appeared very strong.

But ordinarily the observed sequences can only raise a 23rob-
ability that we have found in the antecedent the true cause ; for
this reason: that toe hioio there are of ten such things as iinob-
served or latent or invisihle causes. For instance, the old empiri-
cal chemists knew that something turned the metal, when suf-
ficiently heated, into the calx. They talked of an imponderable:
agent which they named x^^^ogiston. They had not suspected
that oxygen gas was the cause ; for this gas is transparent, in-
visible, and its presence in the atmosphere had not been clearly
ascertained. Had the frequently observed sequence, then, led
them to the conclusion that heat was the efficient and sufficient
cause of calcination, they would have concluded wrong. Further
experiment has taught us this error : some metals, as j^otassium,
calcine rapidly in the midst of intense cold, if atmosphere and
water be present. None of the metals calcine under heat, if
atmosphere and water are both excluded, as well as all other
oxygen-yielding compounds. Here, then, is the weakness of the
induction by the mere enumeration of agreeing instances : Tie
-have not yet found out hut that an xmobserved cause comes hetioeen
the seeming antecedent and the effect, the law of whose rise we
wish to ascertain.

And here is the practical object of all the canons of inductive
logic, and of all the observations and experiments by which we
make application of them, to settle that question, ivhether be-
tween this seeming antecedent and that effect, another hitherto un-
detected antecedent does not intervene. Just so soon as we are
sure there is no other, whether it be by many observations or
few, we know that the observed antecedent is the true efficient
cause ; and that we have a law of nature which will hold true

NATURE OF PHYSICAL CAUSES. 393

always, unless new conditions arise overpowering the causation.
Not only is it possible that we may be assured of the absence of
any undetected cause between the parts of the observed se-
quence by a few observations ; we may sometimes reach the cer-
tainty, and thus the permanent natural law, by a single one.
To do so, what we need is, to be in circumstances which author-
ize us to know certainly that no other antecedent than the ob-
served one can have intruded unobserved. Such authority may
sometimes be given by the testimony of consciousness. For in-
stance, a party of explorers are traveling through a Brazilian for-
est, where every tree and fruit is new and strange to them. One
of the travellers sees a fruit of brilliant color, fragrant odor, and
pleasing flavor, which he plucks and eats. Soon after, his lips
and mouth are inflamed and swollen in a most painful manner.
The effect and the anguish are peculiar. His companions, who
have eaten the same food, except this fruit, and breathed the
same air, do not suffer. This traveller is certain, after one trial,
that the fruit is poisonous, and unhesitatingly warns his com-
panions with the prophecy : " If you eat this fruit, you will be
poisoned." What constitutes his demonstration ? His con-
sciousness tells him that he has taken into his lips absolutely
nothing, since the previous evening, that could cause the poison-
ing, except this unknown fruit. He remembers perfectly. He has
tasted nothing except the coffee, the biscuits, and the dried beef,
which had been their daily and wholesome fare. But, no effect
— no catise. This fruit, the sole antecedent of the painful
effect, must therefore he tlie true cause ; and must affect other hu-
man lips, other things being the same, in the same way. His
utter ignorance of the fruit does not in the least shake his con-
clusion. The traveller has really made a vahd application of the
"method of residues." He has argued validly from a j!;o6Z! hoc
up to a propter hoc.

This is so important that it will not be amiss to illustrate it in
another instance of inductive argument — that of the metals and
calxes. The first observations seemed to show that heat was the
cause of calcination. Bvit when heat was applied to a metal ex-
cluded from atmosphere, it did not calcine. And when the
metallic bases of the stronger alkalies, as potassium, were iden-
tified as metals, it was observed, that this one of them calcined

394 IXDUCTIYE LOGIC DISCUSSED.

violently on a lump of ice. Hence the belief that lieat vras the
efl&cient of calcination liad to be given up — chemists had to con-
fess that the apparent antecedent, heat, in their first experiments
could not be the nearest antecedent, but that this, the true cause,
was still latent. They had really connected their erroneous in-
duction by the joint method of "agreement and difference." It
was reserved for Sir Humphrey Davy to show them the true
efficient of calcination, in the invisible, undiscovered, but all im-
portant agent, oxygen-gas.

Once more ; when the observed antecedent is of a character
which our previous conclusions have not condemned as hetero-
geneous from the supposed effect, and therefore not very un-
likelv to be its cause ; as we increase the number of the agree-
ing instances observed, we feel that oui* probable evidence that
we have found the true cause, grows also. Why is this ? It is
because reason has assured us that this effect has its efficient
cause next before it ; and as this antecedent seems to appear
again and again before it, and no other has yet been detected
between them, it becomes more probable that there is no other
intervening antecedent. If such is the case, then this antece-
dent is the cause.

The Methods of Ixduction.
We are now prepared to advance to the correct definition of
ihe inductive demonstration. It may be, in form, an enthy-
meme, but always, in reahty, is a syllogism, whose major pre-
mise is the universal necessary judgment of cause, or some
proposition imphed therein. This view of the indiictive j^vo-
ceeding corresponds with that conclusion to which the reflection
of twenty centuries has constantly brought back the philosophic
mind : that all illative processes of thought are really syllogistic,
and may be most completely stated in that form ; and that, in
iact, there is no other process of thought that is demonstrative.
The history of philosophy has shown frequent instances of re-
calcitration against this result, as those of Locke, of Dr. Thomas
Brown, and of their followers; but their attempts to discard
syllogism, and to give some other description of the argumenta-
tive 251'ocess of the understanding, have always proved futile.
The old analysis of Aristotle still asserts its substantial sway;

NATURE OF PHYSICAL CAUSES. 395

and successive logicians are constrained, perhaps reluctantly,
tlie more maturely they examine, to return to his conclusion — •
that the syllogism gives the norm of all reasonings. If our
definition of the inductive demonstration, then, can be substan-
tiated, it will give to logic this inestimable advantage : of recon-
ciling and simplifying its departments. The review of opinions
given by us at the outset revealed this state of facts : that logi-
cians felt, on the one hand, that no reasoning process coidd be
conclusive, unless it could be shown to conform, somehow, to
syllogisin ; and on the other, that the custom and fashion of dis-
tinguishing induction from deduction as different, or even oppo-
site, kinds of argument, had become prevalent, if not irresistible.
Consequently, the most of them, following the obscure hints of
their leader, Aristotle, endeavored to account for induction as a
different species of syllogism, in which we conclude from the
some to the all, instead of concluding from the universal to the
particular or the individual. And then immediately they were com-
pelled, by the earliest and simplest maxims of their logic, to admit
that such syllogisms are inconclusive ! And they have to confess
this in the face of this fact : that this induction is the organon of
nearly all the sciences of physics and natural history ; sciences
whose results are so splendid, and so important to human progress !
Such a result is not a little mortifying and discreditable to phi-
losophy. But we hope to show that it is a needless result. It
will appear that induction is not only syllogistic, and therefore
within the pale of demonstrative argumentation, but regularly
and lawfully syllogistic. Mill has had a sufficiently clear con-
viction of the necessity of accomplishing this, to teach (Vol. I.,
pp. 362-365) that the conclusions of this species of reasoning
can only become solid when grounded in a universal truth.
This, he thinks, is our belief in the invariability of the law of
<3ausation. But he then (p. 345) very inconsistently adds, that
this universal truth itself is but a wider induction, which ap-
proaches universal certainty sufficiently near, by reason of its
breadth. This universal and necessary truth, we hope to show,
is the intuition of cause for every effect, along with the truths
involved therein.

To effect this, the methods of induction must be explained.
"When we speak of observed sequences, we mean a set of ob-

396 INDUCTIVE LOGIC DISCUSSED .

served resembling cases where one state or change seems imme-
diately to precede ^another change, or "effect," which we are
studying. These cases may be observed by ourselves, or wit-
nessed to us by others. The fact of the sequence is the only
material thing. But, first, one's own observation must be honest
and clear, and his record of the case exact. He must not see
his hypothesis in the facts, but only what occurs there. And,
second, a case taken on testimony should be fully ascertained
by a judicial examination of the evidence. Having now this set
of agreeing instances, more or less numerous, which gives us, as
it stands, only an induction per enumerationeiii shnplicein, our
task is, so to reason fi-om it as to discriminate ^e propter hoc
from the post hoc. The result of this task, when successfully
performed, is to give us a "law of nature," which is such because
it is a law of true efficient causation. It is to effect this, we
need the methods of logical induction. In stating them, the
chief guide "s\-ill be Mr. Mill, whose discussion in this point
seems the most complete and just.

1. The " Method of Agreement " is the following. Observa-
tion usually gives us secpieuces of this kind, namely, not one ante-
cedent, but a cluster of them appear to stand next before an
effect or (more commonly) a cluster of effects. Such observa-
tion, no matter how often the like case recurs, fails to tell us
which antecedent, or which combination of them, contains the
efficient cause of either effect. Wc must observe further, and
compare cases. Like the algebraist, we will use letters as sym-
bols, for the sake of clearness, calling the antecedents by the
first letters of the alphabet, and the consequents by the latter.
Let us suppose that the cases agree in this : one antecedent re-
mains the same in each, and the same effect appears after each
cluster of antecedents, however the other antecedents may
change. Thus in case 1st, A+B-]-C are followed by X. In
case 2d, A+D+E are followed by X. In case 3d, A+F+G are
followed by X. Let it be postulated that these are all the ante-
cedents : then the true cause of X must be among them. But
in case 1st, neither D, nor E, nor F, nor G, could have caused
X, for they were absent. In cases 2d and 3d, neither B nor G
could have caused X, for they were absent. Therefore A was
the true cause of X each time. The canon, or rule of elimina-

NATURE OF PHYSICAL CAUSES. 397

"tion, or exclusion of seeming but false causes, then, is this:
Whichever antecedent remains alone unchanged next before the
same effect in all the known cases of sequence, is the true cause.
The law of nature gotten in this case is, that A will always,
cceter'is paribus, produce X. The necessary universal truths on
which we have proceeded are, that every effect must have some
cause, and that, to be efficient cause, it must be present.

The converse process is also practicable. Let the cases ob-
served be in the a posteriori order : several clusters of effects
X+Y+Z, X-f-W-f-V, etc., are found to agree only in that among
the antecedents A is constant. The counterpart canon will teach
that X is the effect of A.

As an example of this method may be taken the earlier and
simpler reasoning by which the tides were connected with the
presence of the moon on the meridian. In one case the flood-
tide was observed, we will suppose, at the bottom of a bay pene-
trating the land towards the west. The observed antecedents
were the passage of the moon over the meridian, and also a
strong east wind. It did not appear whether the moon's attrac-
tion or the wind's force was the main cause. At the second ob-
servation, the flood-tide was preceded b}^ the moon's coming to
the meridian, and by a calm ; at the third, by the moon and a
south wind. The argument concludes that the moon is, all the
time, the main cause.

But, simple as this process of exclusion seems, it is not yet a
perfect demonstration in every case. This arises from three
truths, which must be candidly admitted. First. Usually, we
cannot know that the observed antecedents, A-^B-hC, are all the
antecedents really present, becaiise often true causes remain
long latent. Second. The same effect, X, may be caused at dif-
ferent times by different true causes. For instance, fulminate of
mercury explodes under heat ; it also explodes under percussion.
Sensible caloric is emitted by the solar rays ; by compression of
a gas ; by friction ; by chemical actions. If, then, we were safe
from the presence of a latent cause among the antecedents, all
that we should prove by the method of agreement would be : A
is one cause of X (while there may be others). But this would
be no mean result, for it would give us thus much of power over
nature, that we should know (whether or not X could be pro-

398 INDUCTIVE LOGIC DISCUSSED.

duced by other means) we could always produce it wlien vr&
could, cceteris paribus, produce A. Third. One effect may be the
resvdt of the combination of two or more causes. And this single
effect may be the total of what would have been the two separate
effects of the two causes, acting severally ; as when two mechani-
cal forces moving in different lines, propel a mass along the
diagonal of the "parallelogram of forces." Or, the mixed effect
may present itself in a new form, concealing, by its apparent
heterogeneity, both the causations, as when the affinities of an
acid and an alkah form a neutral salt, which exhibits neither
acid nor alkaline reaction. In view of this third truth, it is evi-
dent the "method of agreement" may not tell us absolutely
whether A is the cause of X, or A with which other antecedent
combined. Again, since A may itself be, along with X, one of a
pair of effects of a latent cause, all we can conclude is, either A
is cause of X, or is an invariable function of an unknown cause
of X. The method of agreement, then, does not give us an ab-
solute demonstration, unless we have means of knowing that the
observed antecedents, A-|-B-|-C, A-|-D-^E, etc., are the only an-
tecedents present in each sequence — that no causal antecedent
is left undetected.

2. The " Method of Difference " is apphcable to the foUo^Ning
case. A set of sequences is ascertained, in which, when a given
antecedent is present, a given consequent is also present; but
when that antecedent is absent, that consequent is also absent.
Thus, A+B+C are followed by X+T-f Z. But B+C are only
followed by Y+Z. Here the reasoning proceeds on this pre-
mise : because this antecedent A cannot be excluded without
excluding the effect X, it must be the efficient cause of X. The
canon derived may be thus stated : Whenever the absence of a
given antecedent is followed by the absence of the effect, all the
other circumstances remaining the same, that is the true cause.
The law may consequently be inferred, that A "v\ill always pro-
duce X, cfjeter'is parihxiAs. For instance, let the problem be to as-
certain the true cause of the corrosion or calcination of a metal,
as iron. It is found that sometimes heat and atmosphere are
present ; at other times heat without atmosphere. In the former
cases corrosion always followed ; but when the atmosphere was
excluded, there was no corrosion. The cause of corrosion must,.

NATURE OF PHYSICAL CAUSES. 399

then, be in the air ; further experiment confirms this, by showing
it is in the oxygen of the air.

So far, then, as we can Jcwnu that the second set of sequences,
in which th^e effect failed, differed from the former set in which
it had phice, only in one circumstance, we know that the true
cause is in that circumstance. This is the canon on which most
of our experimental inductions in practical Hfe j^roceed. It is
the one of which experiment usually seeks to make use. For it
is this feature which experiment is most often able to realize,
the reproduction, namely, of the identical sequence, abating one
single known circumstance, which has been observed before.
Hence the method of difference is both more feasible and more
definite in its conclusions than the method of agreement. In-
deed, the chief value of the latter is to suggest a probabihty
which points to the hypothesis indicating the experiment Avhich
will test it. By the experiment thus suggested, an appeal is
made to the method of difference, and the probabilit}' of the law
of cause is either established or exploded.

But the method of difference, when most rigidly appUed, only
proves that A is one cause of X. It does not prove that X may
not be also produced, in other times and places, by other causes.
It may, however, be again remarked, that this gives us so much,
at least : that A, given similar conditions, will always produce
X. Reflection will show, also, that this method may be used in
the counterpart, or a posteriori way. Whatever antecedent is
always absent when the effect X fails, all other circumstances
remaining the same, is a cause of X. But, because this canon
23roves that A always produces X, it does not follow by the con-
verse that every X was produced by A. To the heedless mind,
the two propositions may seem almost identical, but they are
really different, and the second may be false. Its falsehood ap-
pears from the admission that similar effects are often produced
at other times by wholly distinct and independent causes. Ob-
servation may have proved that all solar rays directly produce
calefaction ; but it is entirely erroneous to say all calefaction is
from solar rays directly. Few cautions are more important than
this, which reminds the inductive reasoner, that while like causes
give Hke effects, like effects do not prove like causes.

In this reasoning, we, of course, use the word cause in the sense

400 INDUCTIVE LOGIC DISCUSSED.

of concrete causal antecedent. If it is taken in the more abstract
sense of the efficient energy present in the concrete causal ante-
cedent, it may be a probable hji^othesis, that the energy is the
same in these several concrete causes. Thus, let the effect be
calefaction. It may be caused by the sun's rays, or by combus-
tion, or by some other form of chemical action, or by friction, or
by percussion, or by a modified current of galvanism. This
proves beyond a doubt that the same effect does not always come
fi'om the same (concrete) cause. But the physicist may claim
that the molecular energy, causing the sensible effect of calefac-
tion, may be the same energy in all these different antecedents.
If so, there is an abstract sense in which the effect, calefaction,
proceeds from the same cause all the time. To affirm or deny
this is equally unnecessary to our purpose.

3. The third method may be regarded, from one point of view,
as a double application of the first, or as a combination of the first
and second. The method of difference, as we saw, is the one to
which our intentional experiments usually appeal. Having ob-
served a number of cases in which a cluster of antecedents,
A+B+C, is followed by several consequents, X, Y, Z, and hav-
ing surmised that A causes X, we construct a designed sequence,
in which the cluster of antecedents is in all respects the same,
except the exclusion of A. If X disappears out of the conse-
quents, we reason that A is a true cause of X. But in the study
of nature, instances may well arise in which we cannot control
the antecedents A+B+C, so as to procure the rise of B+C
without A. What can we do ? The third method answers : ob-
serve and record all the instances in nature where B+C occur
without A, and probably with some other phenomenon, as B+C
+D, or B+D+E, etc. If we find that all the seclvisters of an-
tecedents, however else they Taaj differ, agree in the omission of
A and also in the failure of X, the probability is increased that
A is an efficient cause of X. We have made two different ap-
plications of the method of agreement, one affirmative, the other
privative, and they concur in pointing to A as a real cause of X.
As an example : the question was, Which is the real efficient of
the anodyne effect in crude opium? This is known to be a
complex gum. It is also known to contain, as one of its " prox-
imate principles," the alkaloid known as morphia. Every time

NATURE OP PHYSICAL CAUSES.: 401

tlie crude gum is given, including tlie morphia, an anodyne
effect follows. This is no demonstration. Let us now suppose
that organic chemistry has not yet given us the ability to extract
the morphia alone from the crude gum, with an exact certainty
that we took out nothing else and left the opium, in all other re-
spects, what it was before. This inability prevents our resorting
at once to the definite method of difference. But we may col-
lect all known gums any ways akin to opium, containing other
proximate principles which it contains, and administer them.
If we find that among the various effects of the various drugs,
the anodyne effect fails in all which lack morphia, we adopt the
probable opinion that this is the real anodyne agent. But the
wise physician will remember that this is short of demonstration.
The uncertainty always attaching to the method of difference
may be diminished, but cannot be annihilated by doubling the
testimony. Thus, in the instance taken, the first set of cases
would still leave some doubt whether some undiscovered ele-
ment in the crude opium, or some combination thereof with
known elements, might not be the efficient ; and in the second set
of cases, where morphia was absent, and the anodyne effect also
failed, it would not be demonstrated but that the new drugs
given contained some element counteracting an anodyne effect,
which, but for this, might still have been emitted in the absence
of morphia.

4. The fourth method has been termed that of residues. Cases
which present a plurality of antecedents, followed by a plurality
of consequents, are analyzed by it until one pair is left unac-
counted for. This may then be concluded to be cause and ef-
fect. The result observed is, that A+B-fC are frequently fol-
lowed by X+Y-f-Z. Now, if, in any valid way, it has been
j)roved that A is the cause of X, and, if single, produces only
X, and that B produces only Y, then, although we may not ex-
perimentally insulate Z in any separate case, it may be concluded
that C is the true cause of Z. For, the causal efficiency of A
having been traced into X, and of B into Y, there is no source
to which to ascribe Z, except to C. Every effect must have a
present cause. Obviously, to render this method a complete
demonstration, we should be able to know that A, B and C are
the only possible causes present. For if a fourth antecedent.

Vol. in.— 26.

402 INDUCTTVE LOGIC DISCUSSED.

D, remains in addition to C, it may be proved that A has ex-
pended its efficiency in producing X, and B in producing T,
and it ^vill still be an unsettled j^roblem whether C or T>, or a
combination of the two, produces Z. The elimination is in-
complete.

5. Another method remains, which may be applicable where,
in consequence of the inability to experiment, the exact applica-
tion of pre^-ious methods may be impracticable. This may be
called the inference from con^espond'ing vacations. A given
state or change, which we call A, is often seen to be followed
by a change called X. This suggests, as has been so often said,
only a jjrobability that A is the efficient cause of X. But if a
variation in the action of A is seen to be followed by a corre-
sponding variation in the occurrence of X, the probabiHty
strengthens. If a second and a third variation in A is followed
by still other corresj)onding changes in X, the evidence grows
rapidly towards certainty. This variation in the antecedent may
be not only in quantity, but also in dii-ection of its action, or in
some other circumstance; and still it gives us this inference.
The nature of the proof is this : If a given antecedent had no
power over a consequent, a modification of that antecedent
would have no influence on that consequent. Hence, when the
modification of the one is invariably accompanied with a corre-
sponding modification of the other, it seems plain that there
must be some causal tie. But it is not, therefore, ceiiain that
the tie is direct ; the two circumstances which change together
may be connected as two functions of some more recondite
cause. Until we are able, by some experiment or reasoning, to
exclude this hypothesis, our induction by observing correspond-
ing variations is not complete.

Examples of this method may be found in the conclusion that
increments of heat are the causes of the successive expansions of
the mercury in the thermometer We observe that, the more
heat, the more expansion ; the less heat, the less expansion. An-
other application of this induction led to the discovery of the
causes of the variations in the height of the tides. It was ob-
served that when the conjunction or opposition of the sun and
moon was most complete, the spring-tides occurred ; when they
were less complete, the tides were lower ; and when the two lu-

NATURE OF PHYSICAL CAUSES. 403

minaries were fartliest from a conjunction or opposition, a whole
quadrant apart in the ecUptic, the least, or neap-tides, occurred.
Hence, we concluded that the concurrence of the traction of the
moon's force with the sun's, in the same line, is the cause of the
higher tide.

If the corresponding variations in the antecedent and conse-
quent are variations in quantity, and especially if they maintain
an exact proportion in their increase or decrease, such as can be
measured by numerical ratios, the induction is very clear. The
doubling of A results in the doubling of X, the effect ; the quad-
rupHng of A in the quadrupling of X, for instance. Then A ia
clearly the cause of X, or, at least, a regular function of a cause
of which X is an analogous function. And the latter conclusion
enables us to predict the future result as certainly as the former.
But the variations may be in other circumstances than quantity.
For instance, if a given body is surmised to be the cause of mo-
tion in another body, and if the direction of the produced motion
changes regularly in correspondence with the changed direction
of the first body, we conclude that our surmise is correct. Or else,
again, both motions are functions of some force not yet detected,
to which they are both related by a causal tie ; so that the regu-
larity of the observed law of motion is safely assumed.

These five methods of interpreting nature, with their canons,
appear to present all the valid means in the possession of sci-
ence. No other are suggested. But the following reasoning
seems to show that there can be no other. If the antecedent,
which seems to be next the effect, could be surely kno^m in every
case to be really the nearest antecedent, no canons of induction
would need to be appUed. The simple observation would di-
rectly show us the causal tie, and, therefore, the natural law. (It
is only necessary to say, that by nearest antecedent is not meant
the one nearest in time or space ; for in this sense an inefficient
may be as close to the effect as an efficient antecedent ; but we
mean the nearest in the sense of efficiency.) The whole pro-
blem, then, is to make sure that, between the eft'ect and the
nearest visible antecedent, some invisible or unnoted antecedent
has not come. Now, the only M-ays to test this, in man's power,
are by some elimination of parts of the sequences, or some varia-
tion of parts. The methods of agreement, difference, and resi-

404 INDUCTIVE LOGIC DISCUSSED.

dues, if applied in tlieir direct and converse modes, exhaust all
the eliminations practicable, whether of causal or non-causal
antecedents, or of essential or non-essential sequents. The
method of corresponding variations completes the use of the
remaining resource. These methods are but the effectuating of
that task which the sagacity of Lord Bacon pointed out : the
separation of the irrelevant instances from our observed se-
quences, so that the truly causal ones may be disclosed. That
which he foreshadowed, the slow and painstaking care of other
philosophers has carried out to its details, and presented with
more exactitude. It may be rash to assert that no other method
for separating the j^ost hoc from the propter hoc will be added
by the future advancements of logic. Thus far this critical sci-
ence has advanced in the ablest hands of our day.

Dr. T\ hewell impugns, indeed, these methods as artificial and
fruitless. He questions whether it is by them truth is reaUy
discovered, and challenges Mr. Mill to name the important phy-
sical laws which the discoverers have professed to reach by either
of these methods. The answer to this view is, first, to deny
TYhewell's allegation. All the valid inductions of common ex-
perience and of inductive science have been virtually made by
these " methods." And, as we remarked, experiment, the great
lever of induction in the physicist's hands, is both a virtual and
a formal appeal to the " method of difference." The second an-
swer is, that a logical science, in one sense, has not for its end
the discovery of truth in the ssnse of the invention of it, but the
proper function of logic is to test the processes of invention after
they are suggested. Logic is the critical science. The syllogism,
in its other or deductive aspect, is not the inventive organon.
Its oflice is to sit as judge on the processes of deductive thought
which claim to lead to truth. The function of the syllogism is to
hold up its form as a standard of those relations of propositions
which make illations vahd, that the professed reasonings pre-
sented by the inventive faculty, suggestion, may be tried by that
sure rule. So, the rules of the inductive syllogism are not
claimed to be valuable because they are suggestive of unseen
truths, but because they try and discriminate, in the suggestions
supposed or claimed to be inductive, between the vahd and the
invalid. The processes which are active in leading to the un-

NATURE OF PHYSICAL CAUSES. 405

known trntli are observation, hypothesis, and the " scientific
imagination," with experiment. Again, it is but seldom that the
vigorous minds which have reasoned deductively to valuable
truths, have expressed their arguments in formal syllogisms.
Even geometers do not do this, with all the exactness of their
noble science. The reasoner does not usually proceed further
than using enthymemes or sorites in the formal statement of his
arguments ; often he is not even so formal as this. But none
the less is the syllogism the full form of each valid step ; and
the test of its validity is, in the last resort, whether the step can
be stated in a syllogism of lawful mode and figure. So it may
be true that a Galileo, a Newton, a Franklin, a Maury, may not
have expressed his inductive argument in the technical form of
either of the five methods; but if his induction is demonstra-
tive, he has virtually, if informally, emijloyed them. The test of
its validity is, in the last resort, whether his inductive process
can be expanded into one of them, and find in it its full and ex-
act expression.

But it has been admitted that even these methods of induction
do not always lead to absolutely demonstrated results. The in-
sufficiency of the method of agreement was clearly evinced :
either one of three contingencies (see p. 397) would vitiate the
conclusion. Even the method of difference, the most exact of
all, we found (see p. 399) only gave an absolutely certain result,
on condition we could know positively that, between the two
sequences, A+B+C followed by X+Y+Z, and B+C followed by
Y-l-Z, we had made no difference among the antecedents except
the exclusion of A. But, obviously, that is a thing very hard
for us, in most cases, to know positively, and in many cases im-
possible to know. Yet, if it is not known, our inference that A is
the efficient of X, is not absolutely sure, because the possibility
remains that the failure of X to appear among the second set of
effects may be due, not solely to the absence of A from among
the antecedents, but to that other unnoticed change which was
made among them when removing A. Hence, another work re-
mains before an inductive demonstration is complete. This is
Verification.

Now, obviously, one approximate method of verification is to
aj)ply a second method and canon of induction, or a third, in ad-

406 INDUCTIVE LOGIC DISCUSSED.

dition to a first. If they give tlie same result, the probable evi-
dence mounts up towards certainty -witli a multiplying ratio.
But in many cases only one method is applicable. The most
complete verification is obtained by experimenting backwards.
Having reasoned to the conclusion that X is the efl^ect of A, the
student of nature constructs an experiment, in ^yhich A is made
to arise alone. If X follows, and the conditions of the case are
such he can know that no other antecedent capable of producing
X has been present, his induction is verified. Of this the method
of Franklin is an instance, when he completed the inductive
argument that the lightning of the clouds is electricity. His ex-
periments on electrical bodies, and his observation of the light-
nings, had suggested the belief that the causal energy was the
same. This was, so far, only an induction by comparison and
simple enumeration of instances. The lightnings were appar-
ently followed by some of the consequences of the electric energy.
Now, if the two are in reality the same energy, the lightning
should experimentally produce all the known effects of the elec-
tric excitement. To verify this, as is known, Franklin availed
himself of the ingenious expedient of the kite. He thus found
that a conductor, excited no otherwise than from the energy of
the lightning cloud, emitted the spark, communicated the mus-
cular shock, charged the Leyden jar, and did all that the electri-
cal machine had done. Thus, an only probable induction was
verified and raised to the rank of a certainty.

Verification is not confined to experiment; but sometimes a
sagacious observation of nature will detect her giving the con-
firmation. Of this the most splendid instance is the confirmation
of Sir Isaac Newton's hypothesis of the orbitual movements of
the planets by the force of gravity. He had these data of pro-
bability. The law of inertia seemed to give a cause for a tangen-
tial motion absolutely constant. But Copernicus and Galileo
had taught that the planetary motions were orbitual around the
sun as a centre. There was the great mechanical law of the
parallelogram of forces, which teaches us that the mass acted on
by two inomenta in two lines, will move in the diagonal. Add
to the inherent tangential momentum, then, a centripetal force,
and the orbitual motion seems accounted for. Of this orbitual
compound motion, the centripetal element appeared as real a

NATUEE OF PHYSICAL CAUSES. 407

falling to the centre as that of tlie stone (or tlie famous apple)
falling to the earth. But now our terrestrial experiences had
taught him most familiarly how this falling to the earth is the
effect of gravity. The lines pursued by all falling bodies tend to
the earth's centre. Obviously the earth draws them to her
centre. Now, this attraction of gravity acts not only at the
earth's surface, but above its surface to the highest distances at-
tained by mountains and balloons. It obviously acts on the
clouds and their contents. Wliy suppose it limited at all ? Make
the supposition that it is universal, though diminishing in in-
tensity with distance, and why may not this be the very reason
of all these centripetal motions ? Can one guess by what ratio
the force of gravity will diminish ynih. distance ? If it expands
itself in every direction around its centre, it would appear that
its intensity in each point should diminish by the same ratio by
which the surface of a sphere increases ; that is, with the square
of the raclhis. May it not be, then, that while the tangential
motion of each planet is but the original impulse in a straight
line, preserved absolutely constant by inertia, the centripetal or
falling motion compounded therewith, is just the effect of this
gravitation, acting with an energy inversely as the squares of
the distances?

Such was the dazzling hypothesis. (We profess to state it, of
course, not in the very words of Newton, but in the tenor of his
expositors.) But he was too good a logician to assume it as
proved ; he had a probable induction thus far, nothing more.
Verification was needful. He first established the law of plan-
etary attraction, using Kepler's facts (or so-called laws) as his
minor premises. Knowing thus the attraction between the moon
and the earth, he supposed a piece of the moon brought to the
surface of the earth, and from the established law of its attrac-
tion, computed the quantity and direction of the descent this
piece would make in one second when it came to the tops of the
highest mountains. He found that this was identical with the
descent, both in direction and amount, of a piece of the moun-
tain, as acted on by gravity. From the identity of behavior he
infen'ed (by Rule II. of his Iiegulae Philosophandi) that the
force which makes the planetary attraction is identical with the
force of gravity. Thus the grandest hypothesis ever constructed

408 INDUCTIVE LOGIC DISCUSSED.

by a scientific man, was converted by this verification (after-
wards extended to the other planets) into an established truth.
Thus it is successful verification which completes the inductive
demonstration. "Where no verification is possible, many, or
even most, of our inductions may remain but probabilities. But
they are not therefore wholly useless ; for, first, they may guide
the investigator in the invention of tentative hypotheses ; and,
second, as we have seen, they may lend to practical life a guid-
ance which, though not certain, has its value. But such an in-
duction has no right to be set up as a proposition in science.

Induction is Syllogism.
It is now time that we returned and redeemed our promise to
show that induction is but the old syllogistic logic, inasmuch as
each demonstrative process is but an enthymeme, whose real
major premise is the intuitive judgment of cause, or some corol-
lary thereof. We are glad to have the powerful and very em-
phatic testimony of Mr. Mill to this doctrine. In Book III.,
Chap. XXI., he says : "As we recognized in the commencement,
and have been enabled to see more clearly in the progress of
the investigation, the basis of all these logical operations is the
law of causation. The validity of all the inductive methods de-
pends on the assumption that every event, or the beginning of
every phenomenon, must have some cause — some antecedent on
the existence of which it is invariably and unconditionally con-
sequent. In the method of agreement, this is obvious, that
method avowedly proceeding on the supposition that we have
found the true cause as soon as we have negatived every other.
The assertion is equally true of the method of difi^erence. That
method authorizes us to infer a general law from two instances :
one in which A exists together with a multitude of other circum-
stances, and B follows ; another, in which A being removed and
all other circumstances remaining the same, B is prevented.
What, however, does this prove ? It proves that B, in the par-
ticular instance, cannot have had any other cause than A ; but
to conclude from this that A was the cause, or that A will, on
other occasions, be followed by B, is only allowable on the as-
sumption that B must have some cause; that among its ante-
cedents, in any single instance in which it occurs, there must be

NATURE OF PHYSICAL CAUSES. 409

one wbicli lias the capacity of producing it at other times. This
being admitted, it is seen that, in the case in question, that ante-
cedent can be no other than A ; but that, if it be no other than
A, it must be A, is not proved, by these instances, at least, but
taken for granted. There is no need to spend time in proving
that the same thing is true in the other inductive methods. The
universality of the law of causation is assumed in them all."

Let us submit this assertion to a more critical examination ;
and first as to the method of agreement. Refer to page 396. In
the first case, or cluster of cases, we saw A+B+C followed
(possibly among other efiects) by X. In the second, A+D+E,
and in the third, A-|-F+G, are also followed by X. The reason-
ing, rigidly stated, now proceeds thus (and that it may proceed
strictly, it is necessary to make the supposition that no other
causal antecedents are present, except A, B, C, in the first case,
etc., which, in practice, it will usually be very difficult to know) :
In the first case, the cause of X must have been either A or B
or C, or some combination of them. Why? Because it is a
universal a priori truth that there is no effect Avithout a cause.
This step, thrown into a formal syllogism, will be :

1. No effect can arise without a cause.

2. But X arose preceded only by A+B-|-C.

Therefore A or B or C, or some combination of them, must
be cause of X.

So we prove that, in the second case, A+D+E, and in the
third, A+F+G, must have caused X. But next we construct
another syllogism :

1. A cause must be i^resent at the rise of the effect (immediate
coroUary from the intuition of power and efficiency in cause).

2. B and C were absent in the 2d and 3d cases ; D and E
were absent in the 1st and 3d cases ; F and G were absent in
the 2d and 3d cases, while yet X was always present ;

Therefore, none of these, but only A, was cause of X each
time.

But why the last part of our conclusion? Why may we not
conclude that A was cause of X at one of its occurrences, and D
at another, and G at another ? A third syllogism precludes this :

1. "Like causes produce like effects."

2. None but A could be possible cause of all the Xs ;

410 INDUCTIVE LOGIC DISCUSSED.

Therefore A was only cause of each X.

The method of difference (see page 398) proceeds thus: In
one case, or set of cases, A+B+C are followed by X+Y+Z.
In another case, or set of cases, B+C are followed only by Y+Z.
As we saw, to entitle us to proceed rigidly, we must know that,
in the second case, the absence of A is the only differing circum-
stance in the cluster of antecedents; that no other change in
them has been made. We then conclude certainly that A caused
X. The proceeding is a syllogism.

1. Like causes produce like effects.

2. But in the second case B+C did not produce X, which was
present in the first case ;

Therefore neither B nor C is cause of X. And, since there is
no effect without its cause, A must be cause of X.

The third method of induction (see pp. 400, 401) was a com-
bination of the first two, in which the afiirmative result of the
method of agreement was strengthened by the privative result of
the method of difference. The syllogism of the first part has
been already given. In the second part, the process is like that
of the method of difference.

1. Like causes always produce like effects.

2. But neither B+C+D, nor B, D, E, in the second class of
instances, produced X ;

Therefore neither of them is cause of X. But, as there can be
no effect without a cause, A was the true cause of X.

The fourth method is that of residues (see p. 401). "What
observation gives us is a cluster of antecedents, A+B+C,
usually followed by a cluster of effects, X+Y+Z. We prove
that A produces only X, and B only Y. The inference which
remains is, that C is the cause of Z. The syllogism is the fol-
lowing :

1. Like causes always produce like effects.

2. But A produces only X, and B only Y;

Therefore neither is cause of Z. But as there can be no effect
without a cause, the remaining antecedent, C, must be cause
of Z.

This formulation of the inference enables us to see with great
clearness what are the conditions necessary to make it demon-
strative. We must know, first, that A, B, and C are all the an-

NATURE OF PHYSICAL CAUSES. 411

tecedents present wliicli cotilcT be causal of Z, or, in other words,
that there is no j^ossible canse latent. We must know, first, that
A or B produce only X and Y, and that Z is not also another
•effect of one of them or of their combination. For it is not im-
possible in itself that a cause may, under changed conditions,
produce a second effect, different from the first, or at least dif-
ferently conditioned. The intuition, like cause, like effect, is
only a universal truth, while the cause is conditioned in the
same way.

The last method of induction is that by noting the correspond-
ing variations of antecedent and consequent. If a change in the
circumstance of A is invariably followed by a corresponding
change in X, we infer that A causes X. "What is the analysis
of this inference? Our intuition of cause is of that which has
efficient power over its eff'ect. This intuition involves the conse-
quence that only an efficient cause could thus invariably propa-
gate corresponding change in a sequent. But to make this con-
sequence rigid, we must know that nothing varies in the cluster
of antecedents, except that one of them which we suppose to be
connected with the varying sequent. For, if other things among
the antecedents vary, those other things may have to do with
the variations in the sequent. But, with this caution, we may
frame this syllogism :

1. Whatever sequent varies always with a given antecedent
must receive its causal power.

2. But X varies always as A varies, no other change causal of
X concurring;

Therefore X is the effect of A.

Thus, by the successive examination of all the methods of in-
duction, it is shown that they are all virtually syllogistical. The
simple and satisfactory conclusion is thus reached, which unifies
our theory of logic, and which also secures for careful and suffi-
cient inductions that apodeictic character which is so essential
to make them scientific propositions, and wdiich we yet saw de-
nied to them by so many great logicians. Induction and deduc-
tion are not two forms of reasoning, but one and the same. The
demonstrative induction is but that species of syllogism which,
getting its minor premise from observed sequences of fact, gets
its major premise from the intuition of cause.

412 INDUCTIVE LOGIC DISCUSSED.

III.

THE METAPHYSICAL AND THEOLOGICAL APPLICA-
TIONS OF INDUCTION AND ANALOGY.

It is to be lamented that Mr. Mill, after teaching so much
valuable truth, and displaying so just an insight up to this
point, should then assert a view of our universal judgment of
cause, which, if true, would destroy his own science. He be-
lieves, after the perverse metaphysic of his father, Mr. James
Mill, and of the school of Hume, that the mind has no such
universal a priori judgments. He believes that our general
judgment of cause is itself empirical, and is gotten simply by
combining a multitude of inductions enumerat'wms sinijyl'icis. But
these, he admits, are not demonstrative ; and the whole and sole
use of all the canons of induction is to lead from these invalid
colligations to certain truths. And he has confessed that this
is only done by assuming the universal law of cause ; so that
his conception of the whole inductive logic is of a process
which assumes its own conclusion as its own premise! That
he is not misrepresented, will appear from the following cita-
tions from his Logic, Book III., Chap. XXI. : "As was observed
in a former place, the belief we entertain in the universality
throughout natui'e of the law of cause and effect, is itself an in-
stance of induction, and by no means one of the earliest which
any of us, or which mankind in general, can have made. We
arrive at this universal law by generalization from many laws
of inferior generaUty." (P. 100.) "Is there not, then, an in-
consistency in contrasting the looseness of one method with the
rigidity of another, when that other is indebted to the looser
method for its own foundation ? " (P. 101.) " Can we prove a
proposition by an argument which it takes for granted? " (P.
96.) This question, Mr. Mill then says, he has " purposely
stated in the strongest terms it will admit of," in order to reject
the doctrine of a behef in causation as a necessary intuitive
law, and to assert his (as we think, erroneous) doctrine, which
attempts to make the inductive process prove its own fundamen-
tal premise. His apology for this violation of the very first

APPLICATIONS OF INDUCTION AND ANALOGY. 413

principle of logic and common sense is, that the belief in causa-
tion, while only an empirical induction, is "an empirical law
coextensive with all human experience; at which point the
distinction between empirical laws and laws of nature vanishes,
and the projDOsition takes its place among the most firmly estab-
lished as well as the largest truths accessible to science." (P.
103.)

One question dissipates this attempted solution. Is a process
of inductive demonstration only valid, then, to one whose em-
pirical knowledge "is coextensive with all human experience"?
"No. Mr. Mill, for instance, when explaining the proof of a nat-
ural law by the " method of difference," made these two correct
statements : that this method is rigidly conclusive when its con-
ditions are observed ; and that it is by this method the common
people really infer the commonly known laws. It appears, then,
by his own statement, that a beginner in inductive reasoning,
long before he has widened his knowledge until it is " coexten-
sive with all human experience," may make, and does make, in-
ductions to general laws that are valid. Whence does he pro-
cure his universal major premise ? Again : the emjDirical
knowledge of the most learned observer in the world, bears but
a minute, almost an infinitesimal, ratio to the multitude of con-
secutions of events which take place outside of his knowledge.
The idea that mere empirical observation can ever establish a
law as universal, is therefore delusive. It proceeds upon the
supposition that, as the number of agreeing observed instances
is widened, the probability grows toward a certainty that their
agreement expresses the universal law, because the cases actually
tested bear a so much larger ratio to the cases not tested. But
it must be remembered, if the intuitive and original character of
our judgment of cause be denied, we have no means, except the
empirical, to know whether the cases of sequence still untested,
and therefore unknown, will conform to our supposed law or
not. And the belief arising out of this supposed calculus of
probabilities is utterly deceptive. For the number of cases
tested, however large, is still, in the mind of the most learned
physicist, infinitesimally small, compared with the number of
the unknown cases occurring in nature, not to speak of the more
multitudinous cases in past ages. When the physicist has ob-

414 INDUCTITE LOGIC DISCUSSED.

served for years, the number of instances empirically tested does
bear a larger ratio to tlie number vnth. which he began. True,
and this is precisely the delusion which cheated Mr. Mill's
mind. But it is the increased ratio of the empirically known to
the unknown which is necessary, for the purpose of even,
grounding a probability. But this stiU remains infinitesimally
small. Mr. Mill obvioiisly has in his mind some conception
of concurring ■s^•itnesses, confii-ming each other's testimony.
The analogy is plausible, but it should be carefully considered
whether it is just and exact. When a court of law would ascer-
tain the truth as to a crime, we may suppose that more or less
doubt rests on the competency or credibihty of the first witness
summoned. But his statement is taken ; yet it is no sufficient
ground on which to condemn a citizen. A second witness, whose
credibility is also imperfect, is called ; and his statement concurs
with the first. If it is manifest no collusion exists, the corre-
spondence of his statement with the first lends it confirmation.
If many witnesses of this kind, each independent, tell the same
story, although neither one would have been trustworthy enough,
alone, to condemn a man, yet the concurrence begets a practical
certainty, on which a court might even proceed to convict.
Now, Mr. Mill's thought evidently is, that a similar cumulative
process goes on, as one induction is added to another, Avith re-
sults which appear mutually confirmatory. According to him,
the uniformity of nature is assumed as the general premise,
in each of these inductions. 'But it has to be employed as a
major premise, while it is still only an sj,ssumptiou without proof.
But this, that, and the other process, grounded in it, tiu-n out so
as to correspond with each other and with experience, until at
last the inference in favor of it becomes sufficiently cumulative
to be taken as a practical certainty.

The remarks already made, when considered, will show that
this analogy is deceptive. "Why does the judge, after examining
many witnesses, each of imperfect credibility, yet conclude from
the concm-rence of their statements, that he has the truth ? Be-
cause he deems the number examined such as is nearly exhaus-
tive of the whole body of possible evidence. Suppose that judges,
after examining even ten such witnesses, were taught that the
whole number of spectators of the ci-ime was not, as is custo-

APPLICATIONS OF INDUCTION AND ANALOGY. 415

maiy even in public cases, some twelve, or possibly twenty, by-
standers, bnt tliat tlie number of equally near eye-witnesses was
ten thousand, and that there was in each of the tinexamined
nine thousand nine hundred and ninety, any, even the slightest,
tendency to contradict possibly the statement of the ten. The
judge would in that case feel that he had no certainty. There
is the concurrence of the ten thus far examined? Yes; but
there is also some possibility that the next ten may concurrently
contradict them ; and the same possibility is repeated with nine
hundred and eighty other tens. Had the case been this : the
whole number of possible witnesses being twelve, or possibly
twenty, ten have been actually- examined and found concurrent
Avithout collusion, the cumulative probability arising out of this
concurrence of the ten might weigh very potently against any
surmise or expectation of a contrary testimony in the two, or
even the ten, not examined. This is the case which has deceived
Mr. Mill. But it is not the case at all which the inductive rea-
soner has in hand. The number of sequences tested by physi-
cists bears a most minute ratio to the untested sequences, in
which, on Mr. Mill's theory, there is an a priori possibility of a
contradictory law. He has himself given us a remarkable con-
fession of this. Book III., Chap. XXI, in his assertion that, after
all our inductive researches, we stiU have no evidence that this
uniformity of nature is the law of the universe. We may assume
it only of " that portion of it which is within the range of our
means of sure observation."

Again, the postulate of the uniformity of nature would not be,
on Mr. Mill's theory, even one that might be provisionally as-
sumed, because it is obnoxious at its first siiggestion, and
throughout our provisional course of inquiry, to apparent con-
tradictions. To the merely empirical eye nature appears vari-
able and capricious almost as often as she does constant. So
that, had our inductions only an empirical basis, instances of
apparent testimony against this general j^remise might midtiply
as fast as instances of seeming concurrence in its favor. The
real reason that the results of induction are not thus embarrassed
is, that true induction is not merely empirical, as Mr. MiU sup-
poses. Once more, if the general premise underlying each case
of induction is only an assumption, then it is a priori possible it

416 INDUCTIVE LOGIC DISCUSSED.

may involve an error. If it does, ^vby may not tliat element of
error be multiplied and spread itself through the body of con-
nected processes in a geometrical degree ? Then, the bodv of
supposed science is always Uable to turn out, after all, like the
Ptolemaic h^-pothesis of the heavens, an inverted pyramid, an
ingenious complication of propositions forced into a seeming
harmony by their common trait of involving the radical error?
Science has often shown that a hypothetic structure may be
widely built out, and may stand long in apparent strength, and
yet be overthrown.

We close this refutation with this testimony from Esser,
adopted by Hamilton {Logic, Lecture 32, end) : " It is possible
only, in one way to raise induction and analogy from mere pro-
bability to comj)lete certainty, namely, to demonstrate that the
principles which lie at the root of these processes, and which we
have ah'eady stated, are either necessary laws of thought, or
necessary laws of nature. To demonstrate that they are neces-
sary laws of thought is impossible, for logic not only does not
allow inference from many to all, but expressly rejects it. Again,
to demonstrate that they are necessary laws of nature, is equally
imj)OSsible. This has, indeed, been attempted, from the uni-
formity of nature, but in vain. For it is incompetent to evince the
necessity of the inference of induction and analogy from the fact
denominated tJie law of nature, seeing that this law itself can
only be discovered by the way of induction and analog}-. In
this attempted demonstration there is thus the most glaring
2)etitio prhicipti. The result which has been previously given
remains, therefore, intact. Induction and analogy guarantee no
perfect certainty, but only a high degree of probability, while
all 231'obabihty rests, at best, on induction and analogy, and
nothinar else."

Hamilton and his German teacher, Esser, here do two things,
one of which is right and the other is wrong. They utterly re-
fute Mill's attempt to ground an apodeictic induction in his false
metaphysics as to man's primitive judgment. This is the right
thing. They also den}' to the inductive logic all apodeictic char-
acter. This is their ^^-rong teaching. Surely this conclusion is
as much against common sense and the universal practical con-
victions of mankind, as it is against their experience. Men as-

APPLICATIONS OF INDUCTION AND ANALOGY. 417

sureclly believe tliat tliej have a multitude of certain demon-
strated inductions. They are right in believing so. On these
practical inductions, simple and brief in their processes it may
be, yet real inductions, men are proceeding %^'ith absolute confi-
dence, in their business, every day of their lives. It is by an
induction that we all know we shall die. Does any man think
his o-svn death only a high probability ? All know death is cer-
tain. Here are all the modern triumphs of physical science,
Avhich civiHzed mankind regard as much their assured possession
as the pure propositions of geometry. No one regards their
laws as of only probable truth. The world intrusts its wealth,
health, life, to them with absolute faith. But most of the laws
of physics are truths of induction. Hamilton's conclusion, then,
while right in denying a foundation for their certainty where
Mill and his predecessors propose to place it, in the imif ormities
of nature, is WTong in allo"^ing to the inductive logic only pro-
bable force. He, like the rest, overlooked too much the concern
which our primary judgment of causation has in these processes.
They did not correctly apprehend the relation of this great in-
tuition to them. It is humbly claimed that, in explaining that
relation, by means of a rigid and exhaustive analysis of the in-
ductive methods, this branch of logic has been reconciled with
itself, and with the practical convictions of mankind. Its com-
plete exploits of proof are discriminated from its incomplete
ones. The former are lifted out of their uncertainty, to the pre-
rogative of the syllogism, by showing that they do not conclude
from some to all, but from a ujiiversal and necessary- judgment
to particulars and individuals. Why should it be thought a
strange thing that this primary judgment should be found to
hold so fundamental a place at the very corner-stone of the
sciences ? The further philosophy is rightly pursued, the more
is the unique importance of this great norm of the reason, Ex.
nihilo 7iihil, in ah the departments of human thought disclosed.
It is the regulative notion of the reason.

In defending the intuitive quality of this judgment, then, we
are defending the very being of the natural sciences, and also
of theology. This is the principle of the reason, on which both
the cosmologic and teleological arguments for the being of a God
are founded. Hume, the great finisher of the SensationaKst

Vol. UI.— 27.

418 INDUCTIVE LOGIC DISCUSSED.

metaphysics, saw that in clenjdug to the mind an intuition of
cause, he was undermining those arguments. Teach with him,
that this judgment is only an empirical one, learned from expe-
rience ; and his cavil against those arguments, that the world,
if an effect, is one too singular and unique to be argued about as
we argue of common experienced effects, at once becomes for-
midable. To undermine theolog}^ was his purpose. But we have
shown that his metaphysics also undermines the sciences. The
inductive method, on this philosophy of Hume, becomes as base-
less and uncertain as he wished theology to be ; and its doctrines
are degraded from certainties to guesses. The history of the
inductive sciences illustrates this influence. When they were
prosecuted by the Boyles, Newtons, and the illustrious company
of Christian physicists, whose metaphysic was that of Cudworth,
Clarke, and Butler, they gave the world those splendid and solid
results which constitute the wonders of modern civilization. But
when the votaries of the inductive sciences, like Dr. Huxley,
have embraced the empiricism of Hume, Comte, and Mill, they
stagger and grope, and give the world, in place of true science,
the vain hypotheses of evolutionism and materialism. In as-
serting the true nature of induction we have been pleading the
cause of science, no less than of theology.

Final Cause and Induction.
If we may judge from the gentleman last named, the hostility
of the empirical school is particularly directed against the the-
istic doctrine of Final Causes. They see how intimately it is
connected mth the teleological argument for the being and at-
tributes of God. The Aristotelians, it will be remembered, were
accustomed to say that an effect, in order to be fully thought, must
be considered in its material, \i& fonnal, its efficient, and its, Jinal
cause. No intelligent agent acts withoiit an aim ; for he cannot,
as intelligent, act without motive. The purpose of coordinating
the effect he produces to some end which, in his view, has some
value, is implied in his action ; and the supposed value of tliat
end is his motive for the volition. In this sense it may be con-
sidered as the psychological cause, uhia, of the effect. Tlais is
final cause. If the universe is the product of intelligence, and
is governed In' intelligence, then it follows that every physical

APPLICATIONS OF INDUCTION AND ANALOGY. 41^

effect lias also a final cause. This is the doctrine which is the
especial object of the empiricist's opposition. He is fond of
quoting the words of Bacon, Novum Orgcuium, L. II., Aphorism
2: ^^At ex his caxtsa finalls tantam aljest xU prosit, ut etiam sclen-
tias corrximpat, nisi in liominis actionihus.^^ But fui'ther exam-
ination of Bacon's system would have shown them that it was
not the belief in final causes he disapproved, but that illicit as-
sumption of a. particular purpose of the Creator in a particular
effect, in advance of inductive proof, which he had found cor-
rupting physical science in the hands of the scholastics.^ When,
for instance, he saw them arguing that the " waters which were
above the firmament" must mean a literal transparent ocean of
water in the inter-planetary spaces, because God's final cause
for placing it there was to arrest and temper the beams of the
sun, which otherwise would scorch the planets too much. Bacon
very properly objected to this assumption of a final cause in the
midst of the inquirj^ into a physical fact. In its proper place he
does due honor to the doctrine of final cause. He was too wise
to reject it. For it is the meeting-point of theology, philosophy,
and the inductive logic. Mr. Dugald Stewart (Yol. III. Collect-
ed Writings, Ch. IV., § 6) has elegantly explained Bacon's true
position, cited the approbation of Boyle, Cudworth, and Newton
for the study of final causes, and shown their importance as a
guide to inductive inquiry. Descartes professed to decline their
consideration, on the ground that it was presumptuous for a
creature so short-sighted as man to undertake to impute designs
to God's actions. This objection is met at once by distinguish-
ing between the lawful and unlawful uses of this inquiry. To
assume that God always has some designed rational end for all
his creations and actions, this surely is not presumption, but
only the necessary respect for his wisdom; to suppose that he
had not always such designs, this would be the presumption —
yea, the insult — for it would ascribe to him the action of work-
ing when he had no rational motive ; a surmise necessarily dis-
paraging to his wisdom. Which particular design God has in a
given structure, this we are not to presume, but humbly to learn
from his teachings through his works, in such cases as they dis-
close their end ; and in all other cases we arc to remain modest
^fiee IJe Augmentis Scient., L. III., ch. -1, o.

420 IXDUCTITE LOGIC DISCUSSED.

in our ignorance. But the doctrine that each thing has some
final cause, that a wise Creator did not make it aimlessly, this is
the main guide of induction. It is by its light we are guided to
the discovery of the laws of cause and effect. The illustration
given by Dr. Harvey's discovery of the circidation of the blood
is equally splendid and familiar. He himself informed Boyle
that he was led to it by the fact that he found in the veins mem-
branous valves opening towards the heart, and in the arteries
similar valves opening the other way. He reflected that nature
never does anything in vain (which is the same thing as saying
that every structui'e has some final cause); and he was thus taught
that the blood flows inward to the heart from the various parts
of the body by the veins, and outward by the arteries. In like
manner, the doctrine that every structure has certainly sovie
function, is the very lever of the constimction of comparative
anatomy. But what is this function but the final cause of the
structure ? To discover the function is the main task this sci-
ence proposes to itself. This is the end pursued through all the
comparative dissections. And when the function, or final cause,
is discovered, the physiologist knows that he has discovered a
general law, not only of that variety or species, but of all spe-
cies possessing that organ. Cuvier argued : No animal devoid
of canine teeth -srill ever be found with its feet armed with pre-
hensile claws. Why? Because the function of the canine teeth
is to masticate living prey ; but nature, after depriving the mouth
of siich teeth, and equipping it only with graminivorous teeth,
will never perpetrate the anomalj' of arming the feet \nih. claws
whose function is to catch living prey. Such is the character
of the arguments of this great scienjce. Deny the doctrine of
final cause, and it has no basis.

Indeed, if final causes are discarded, there is no longer any
basis for any inductive demonstration. The object of this pro-
cess, in every branch of science, is to discover a general and
permanent lav:. How do we accomplish this? Let the admit-
ted answer be repeated: It is accomplished by distinguishing
from among the seeming antecedents of a given effect that one
which is the "invariable unconditional antecedent" (Mill). For
the very nature of inductive logic is to assure us that, when we
have truly found this invariable unconditional antecedent in

APPLICATIONS OP INDUCTION AND ANALOGY. 421

some cases, it will infallibly introduce that effect in all similar
cases. Tliis is what is assumed as tlie " natural law," But how
are we authorized to infer this ? By our general premise con-
cerning "the uniformity of nature." But the system which dis-
cards final cause also denies that there is any intuition of a ne-
cessary law of cause. It denies that there is any cognition of
an efficient power in cause, for the senses perceive nothing Imt
a sequence. It teaches that the belief in the invariability of
natural law is itself but an empirical conclusion, and one which
cannot possibly be proved to be universal or necessary, since it
begins in no necessary first truth, but only in probabilities.
Then, it is impossible the mind can validly conclude the con-
nection between any antecedent whatever and any consequent
to be universal and necessary. For where does that connection
abide ? On this system it can abide only in the material things
which exhibit ih.e 2)henomena. But they are dead, senseless, un-
knowing, unremembering, involuntary matter ; matter which, as
it is empirically observed, exhibits itself to us as infinitely vari-
able, and unaccountably variable. From such premises the ex-
pectation of any permanent law whatsoever is unwarranted, and
scientific induction out of the question.

Now, if there were no other ground for invariable uncondi-
tional sequence, would an intuitive expectation of the univer-
sality of any law of cause be better grounded than this empirical
one ? Let this be pondered : our main effort has been to show
that this expectation is intuitive, and not merely empirical,
and that therefore it is the inductive inference holds good.
Could the intuitive or a jyTwrl reason consistently hold this ex-
pectation if it saw in a true cause no efficient power ? Obvi-
ously not. This would be to expect the first link certainly to
draw in the second, when there was no certain connection be-
tween them. But again, if efficient power in a second cause is
not the expression of any final cause whatsoever, in any intelli-
gent agent, would the reason ever regard it as a certain connec-
tion between the parts of the sequence V Obviously not. For,
the first lesson the reason has learned about the material bodies
which are the seats of the plienomena, is, that they are blind,
inert, unintelligent. All the education the reason has received
about these bodies is, that they are sahject to variation. Ocx

422 INDUCTIVE LOGIC DISCUSSED.

-wliole discussion is about "effects." But what is effect save
change? The very problem of all science is, Nature's changes.
How did the reason learn from nature's perpetual variations,
then, to trust in the invariability of nature? And especially
when this nature is material, and too bUnd to have conscious-
ness either of her own changes or stability, of her observance
or violation of her supposed laws? To explain this intuitive
expectation of the invariability of causal changes, as a healthy
act of the reason, there must be somewhere a sufficient cause of
the laAv in nature. And the only sufficient cause is the final
cause which is the expression of the intelligence which made
and governs nature. We believe in the stability of a natural
law when we discover it, only because we beheve in the function
which a stable intelligence has designed in endowing that thing
with that law. Why are we so certain that "like causes always
produce like effects " ? Because the same reason tells us that the
power deposited in that natural cause was put there by a su-
preme intelligence, and, therefore, for a final cause ; and that the
wisdom which planned will certainly regulate, on the same con-
sistent plan, the machinery of causation there established. The
postulates of theism are necessary to ground the inferences of
induction. The doctrine of divine purpose, and that of the sta-
bility of the law of true causes, are the answering parts of one
system of thought. When this is asserted, it is not designed to
retract the proposition so often asserted as fundamental, that
our belief in the regularity of the law of cause is intuitive, or to
represent that judgment now, as a deduction from the proposi-
tions of theism. What is meant is this: that while the
Creator did fashion the human reason so as to be intuitively
necessitated to beheve in cause, that he might be consistent in
doing so he also gave it the evidence of his own causation and
intelligent design in all his works. The two judgments are com-
plementary to each other; the suppression of the latter would
leave the other inconsistent. God's constancy to his own ends is
the only explanation of that stability, which he has necessitated
us to expect in the laws of the second causes by which he de-
signs to effectuate those ends. Or else, the alternative explana-
tion must be, that the causal ties in j)hysical sequences are eternal
and necessary, essentially immanent in the very being of the

APPLICATIONS OF INDUCTION AND AN-\iOGY. 423

material bodies acting and acted on, and tliis is fatalism. Let
the Huxleys and Comtes, tlien, clioose between this absolute
fatalism and the doctrine of final causes. They have no other
alternative.

EXPEEIENCE AND ANALOGY.

It has been debated, what relation the popular arguments
from experience bear to inductions. If the reader has accepted
the view of the inductive logic here taught, he will answer that
experimental arguments are identical with inductive. That is to
say, they are nothing but popular attempts to reason inductively ;
and they differ from scientific inductions only in the simplicity of
the process attempted (which is most frequently by the " Method
of DijEference "), the homeliness of the cases argued, the smaller
number of the particulars coUigated, and the heedlessness or in-
accuracy commonly practiced. So far Macaulay was correct in
his amusing application of the Baconian method. A moment's
consideration shows that the attempt made by the experimental
argument is either an imperfect induction jper emimerationem
simpltcera, or else it is an attempt to develop a law of cause
among experienced instances, by some canon of inference. " It
is observed that rains often follow the new moons " (so the popu-
lace suppose). "Therefore, the changes of the moon somehow
cause rain." Such is the most imperfect and invalid form of the
process. In the picture drawn by Macaulay, an attempt is made
by the plain squire to apply a canon of inference. " I ate mince
pies on Monday and Wednesday, and I was kept awake by indi-
gestion all night." This is the comjparentia ad intellectmn in-
stantiaruvi convenientium. "I did not eat any on Tuesday and
Friday, and I was quite well." This is the comjxirentia instan-
tiarum in proximo quae natura data privantur. "I ate very
sparingly of them on Sunday, and was very slightly indisposed
in the evening. But on Christmas day I almost dined on them,
and was so ill that I was in some danger." This is the covipar-
entia instantiarum secundum majus et minus. " It cannot have
been the brandy I took with them. For I have drunk brandy
for years, without being the worse for it." This is the rejectio
naturarum. Our invalid then proceeds to what is termed by
Bacon the vindemlatio, and pronounces that mince pies do not
agree with him.

424 rNDUCTIYE LOGIC DISCUSSED.

So the most of the practical truths men use in their daily life
are but easy inductions by the method of difference. That fire
biuTis, that water quenches thhst, that alcohol intoxicates, that
emetics nauseate — these common judgments are made, and usu-
ally made so early and so easily in our experience, that "sve cease
to analyze them by comparing our conscious antecedents in the
instances when we were burned, or satiated, or intoxicated, or
nauseated, "^ith the instances when we were not, and noting that
the only difference in the antecedents was the presence of the
fire, or the water, or the alcohol, or the emetic.

The question. What is the analogical argument? has been,
greatly confused by yarying definitions of the word " analogy."
Some of these, as the one from Quinctilian prefixed by Bishop
Butler to TJie, Analogy {Ejus haec vis est, ut id quod duhium est
ad aliquid simile, de quo non quaeritur, referat, ut incerta certis
jprohet), are not incorrect, but are indefinite. Such, also, is Dr. S.
Johnson's : "A resemblance between things -VN-ith regard to some
circumstance or effects, as when learning is said to enligJden the
mind." It would appear that in popular language the word is.
often used as a sjmonym of the word Hkeness or resemblance.
Things are said to haye analogy because they haye hke proper-
ties. It is ob^dous that, if this is all the word means, we haye
no use for it. Some, seeing this, propose that where we see be-
tween two objects diyersity of quahties and yet a likeness in some
one quahty, we shall term these analogous. According to this
view, analogy would be resemblance in diversity. But again, it
is obvious that we have no use for the term, for it only describes
what we have described aheady as partial or incomplete resem-
blance. Moreover, the defijiition is fatally defective, in that it
fails to signahze the quahties or circumstances in which the anal-
ogous things must agree, while differing in others. On that dis-
crimination it is obvious the vaHdity of an analogical argument^
from one of these things to the other, must turn. Stewart, in
one place, distinguishes resemblance fi'om analogy thus : resem-
blance is similarity of property between individuals ; analogy is
similarity between species or genera. But he almost imme-
diately confesses that this is a distinction without a difierence.
The act of comparison by which we colHgate two agi'eeing in-
dividuals in a species, does not differ from that by which we

APPLICATIONS OF INDUCTION AND ANALOGY. 425

colligate two agreeing species under a gemis. As Hamilton has
so luminously -sliown by liis discussion of " extension " and " in-
tension," tlie only difference is, tliat in making the sub-class,
we cognize fewer individuals and more agreeing attributes ; and
in the larger class, more individuals and fewer agreeing attri-
butes.

Hamilton aims, after his favorite teacher, Esser, to discrimi-
nate analogy very sharply ; yet his distinction is also unsatisfac-
tory [Logic, pp. 450, 455). He teaches that the inference of in-
duction is, when from observing that many individuals of a class
have a given quality, we predicate it of all the individuals of the
class. The inference of analogy is, when from observing that
several individuals agree in two or more qualities, we conclude
that they agree in all the qualities essential to the class, and we
collect them under it. The inference of induction may be illus-
trated thus: a class is composed of A, B, C, D, E. We ob-
serve in A, B, C, a given property, Z ; whence we conclude the
same property qualifies D and E. The inference of analogy
would be illustrated thus : We have a class which is defined by
the essential qualities X, Y, Z. Examining an individual, A,
not yet grouped under this class, we find in it the properties X
and Y ; whence we infer, without examining further, that A also
has the other property, Z, and thus belongs to the class. Of
this description we observe, first, that both inferences are from
the some to the all, and therefore, as Hamilton admits, not de-
monstrative. The first, which he calls the inference of induc-
tion, is in fact sophistical, and has no proper place in logic.
For, how came D and E to be in the class supposed, when their
possession of the essential class-property, Z, has not yet been
ascertained, either by observation or inference ? It must be ob-
served that the places of D and E in the class are conceded first,
in order to prepare the way for the inference of induction, which
extends to them the class-property Z ; whereas, if that property
had not been already ascribed, they would not have place in the
class at all. Further, if there is any even probable authority for
extending the property Z to them, in advance of actual inspec-
tion, that authority must come from the second kind of inference,
called the inference of analogy. The one inference, then, is only
a corollary of the other, instead of being a distinct logical pro-

426 INDUCTIVE LOGIC DISCUSSED.

cess. This attempted distinction, therefore, gives us no help in
defining the argument bv analogJ^ We have on preceding pages
explained the real processes of the mind in the ascription of class-
attributes and the formation of classes. The remarks there made
will sufficiently clear up this subject.

The only mode of making the doctrine perspicuous is to re-
strict the word analogy to a particular kind of likeness. While
resemblance, the basis of classification, is similarity of properties
in single objects, analogy should be defined aspaircllelisvi of re-
lations heticeen cases. Kesemblance is between an object and an
object, either individiials or classes. Analogy is between a pair
of objects and a pair of objects. Both Stewart and Hamilton
mention this view of the matter, but seem to mention it only to
discard it. But Whately sees the value of this view, and defines
analogy as parallelism of relations. The most definite concep-
tion of analogy is given by a mathematical equation of ratios.
Thus, 3:9: : 4 : 12 ; or 9 -f- 3 = 12 -f- 4. Neither of these
pairs of numbers is equal, nor are their sums equal. But there
is one relation between 3 and 9 which is identical with a rela-
tion between 4 and 12. It is, that in each pair the smaller is
one-third part of the larger. The "mathematical proportion,"
then, is a perfect analogy ; and it gives us the most definite and
exact conception. And inasmuch as the relation between the
two pairs is not only like, but identical, the exjaression 9 -i- 3 =
12 -^- 4 is a true equation, and may be used as a premise for
demonstrations as exact and rigid as any other mathematical
proof. Let it, then, be agreed that our nomenclature shall be
cleared of confusion by using the word analogy in the sense only
of resemblance of relations between pairs, and we shall gi'asj) a
tenable conception of the analogical argument.

Belations are multifarious. There may be, between all ob-
jects qualified by quantity, relations of quantity, as ratio and
equality. There may be, again, betw'een events connected in
sequence of time, relations of causality. There ma}' be, between
bodies, relations of space; but as space is measurable, these
would resolve themselves into the first class. Again, between
organisms, there ma}' be relations of function, and these being
'causal, resolve themselves into the second class. We have seen
that in a mathematical proportion, identity of ratios may give us

APPLICATIONS OF INDUCTION AND ANALOGY. 427

demonstrated results. So, in a causal analogy, that parallelism
of relations whicli is complete and amounts to identity, may give
a demonstrative conclusion. What else is the demonstrative
induction by the method of diflference ? It is but the establish-
ment of full parallel or identity between the causal relation in
a pair of terms, the antecedent and consequent, namely, in an
observed sequence, and other antecedents and consequents in
future sequences not yet observed. And this identity of causal
relations is the ground of our belief that the same sequence will
recur. This" is what gives us the "law of nature" as to that
class of phenomena. But if the parallelism of relations is im-
perfect, or imperfectly ascertained, then the analogical inference
is only probable ; and the probability diminishes as the paral-
lelism of relations weakens.

If this perspicuous view of analogy is true, we are led to re-
sults very different from those announced by the eminent logi-
cians criticized. But the results, if tenable, greatly simplify
and unify this department of logic. Instead of separating the
analogical argument from both the experimental and the induc-
tive, we find that the analogical is but the common method,
including both the others. We have already shown that the
experimental inference is simply a plain and brief induction.
An inductive argument is simply an inference from that subdi-
vision of the analogical argument (from parallelism of relations
TDetween two or more pairs) where the relations in question are
the causal relations in sequences. The inference from a complete
parallelism in causal relations is the apodeictic induction ; the
inference from an imperfect parallelism of causal relations is the
probable induction, that jper emimeratione7n shnplicem. Pre-
vious writers have been mistaken also, in deciding that the
analogical argument cannot rise above probability (as we saw
Hamilton declare of the inductive). In fact, the analogical
argument, like the inductive, which is a branch of it, may be
demonstrative, or it may be only probable, according to the
completeness of the parallel between the relations compared or
its incompleteness.

The Apodeictic Induction.
In concluding this exposition, then, it is necessary to remark

428 INDUCTIVE LOGIC DISCUSSED.

on the looseness and confusion wliicli have prevailed in tlie use
of the term induction, as of the word " analogy.*' 1. Sometimes
the mere colligation of resembling cases has been called induc-
tion. 2. Sometimes the name has been given to the mere ten-
tative inference from the some of the obsei^ved cases to the all,
including the unobserved. 3. Sometimes it has been used to
describe what is in reality no jjfoce^s of argument at all, but the
mere formulating in a single proposition of a class of observed
facts, as when, having seen by inspection a given predication
true of each and every individual separately, we predicate it of
the class. Thus Hamilton, more than once. 4. But the induc-
tive demonstratiofi is wholly another and a higher matter. It is
the valid inference of a law of natui^e from observed instances
of sequence, by applying to them a universal necessaiy judg-
ment, as premise, the intuition of cause for every effect. It has
been often said, as by Grote's Aristotle, for instance, that induc-
tion is a different process from syllogism, and is, in fact, pre-
liminary thereto ; that induction prepares the propositions fi'om
which syllogism reasons. This is true of that induction, abusively
so called, which we have just numbered first and third. It is
not true of inductive demonstration. It has usually been as-
sumed that while induction is a species of reasoning, it is a dif-
ferent, and even an opposite, species from deduction. The first
and third actions of the mind, abusivel}' called inductions, do
indeed differ from deduction ; but they are not argumentatiA^e
processes at all ; they do not lead to new truth, either inwards
or downwards. They merely formulate in general terms, or in
general propositions, iudi\ddual percepts or individual judgments
already attained. True induction, or inductive demonstration,
is simply one department of syllogistic reasoning, and is as ti'uly
deductive as the rest of syllogism ; giving us, namely, those de-
ductions which flow fi'om the combination of the universal and
necessary intuition of cause, A^dth obsers'ed facts of sequence.

This explanation of the nature of the Inductive Logic power-
fully confirms the cautions of its wisest practitioners, as to the
necessity of painstaking care in its pursuit. It is a method of
ascertaining truth closely conformed to the divine apophthegm^
"With the lowly is wisdom." It is evidently a modest science.
Only the greatest patience, candor, and caution in observing, and

ArPLICATIONS OP INDUCTION AND ANALOGY. 429

the most lionest self-denial in guarding against the seduction of
one's own hypotheses, can lead to safe results. A.fter this review,
the charge which Mr. Mill brought against much of the pre-
tended inductive science of our day, quoted by us at the outset,
appears every way just. What else than unsafe results can be
expected from persons who have never truly apprehended what,
the inductive argument is, when they venture to employ it, with
the most confused notions of its real nature, and under the
sti'/nulus of competition, haste, prejudice, and love of hypothesis ?
Time and the future have a huge work of winnowing to perform
upon the fruits of the busy mental activity of this generation,
before the true wheat is gathered into the garners of science.

As Moses and our Saviour epitomized the Ten Command-
ments into the one great law of love, so the canons of valid in-
duction may be popularly summarized in one law. It is this :
So long as all the known facts can he reconciled with any other
hypothesis whatsoever than the one propounded as the inference of
the induction, even though that other hypothesis be no better
than an invention or surmise, tlie inductive argument is invalid
to give a demonstration ; it yields only a probability. This rule
receives an excellent illustration from the legal rule of " circum-
stantial evidence " in criminal trials. And the illustration is so
good for two reasons : that there is so close a resemblance, in
many points, between inductive reasoning and circumstantial
evidence ; and that the great men who, as jurists, have settled
the principles of the legal science of evidence, have brought to
their problem the ripest human sagacity, sobered and steadied
by the consideration that these principles were to have apphca-
tion, in dreadful earnest, to the lives and liberty of all citizens,
including themselves. Let us suppose, now, a case in which a
murder has been committed, in darkness and supposed privacy,
with a firearm. No other species of evidence is supposed to
be available than the circumstantial. The prosecution therefore
collect every, even the most minute fact, and, with great inge-
nuity and plausibihty, they construct this hypothesis of guilt:
that the dead man was feloniously shot by A. B. So many ob-
served facts seem to tally ynih. this, that all men lean to the con-
clusion A. B. is probably guilty. But the learned judge instructs
the jury that the prosecution are bound to show, not only that

430 INDUCTIVE LOGIC DISCUSSED.

the hypothesis of A. B.'s guilt may satisfy all the observed facts,
but to demonstrate absolutely that it alone can satisfy them ; so
that the logical result shall be, not only that we may, but that we
must, adopt this as the only true explanation of the circum-
stances proven. And the judge will authorize the defence to
test that point thus : If another hyj^othesis than A. B.'s guilt,
which, as a proposition, is naturally feasible, can be even in-
vented, though unsupported by any array of proved facts, which
may also satisfy the facts estabhshed before the court, the prose-
cution have failed to establish the guilt of the accused. The in-
geniiity of the lawyers on that side is no less than was supposed,
and the probability of A. B.'s guilt may remain ; biit it is not
proved, and the man must be discharged.

This principle of jurisprudence is in strict accordance with the
logic of induction. The analysis of the judge's grounds of rul-
ing is this : no one can assert that eveinj event, preceding and
attending the killing, has been ascertained and stated by the
prosecution. That this remark is true, appears sufficiently from
the fact that both sides j)ostulate that the killing was done in
darkness and in the absence of spectators. Of course, then, the
probability, or at least j)ossibility, always remains, that while
the facts given in testimony are all true, other circumstances
also truly occurred, not appearing in testimony, and so not con-
sidered by anybody. But may it not be that, if there were such
other circumstances, and if they were established in testimony,
we should see them to be material ? They might contain what
would refute the hypothesis of A. B.'s guilt, or suggest some
other. How shall we be sure, in our ignorance, that the case
may not be such, in truth, in its unknown circumstances ? Only
by making an induction which shall be jjositivdy exclusive of
that other hypothesis ; that is to say, only by showing that any
unknown circumstances of the killing, if brought fo light, could
not weaken the hypothesis of A. B.'s guilt. And this is not
shown as long as circumstances naturally feasible, which would
supersede that hypothesis, can be imagined or suggested. In
other words, iu order to raise the argument on the circumstances
to the grade of a demonstration, it must be like the positive in-
duction, by the method of difference. The effect investigated
is the killing; the cause assigned is A. B.'s agency. To jjrove

APPLICATIONS OF INDUCTION AND ANALOGY. 431

this lij'potliesis, it must not only be shown that the presence of
A. B. plus any cluster of known or unknown antecedents, D, C, E,
etc., could cause the killing ; but it must also be shown that the
presence of all those other antecedents, D, C, E, etc., minus A.
B.'s agency, could not cause the killing. See the Canon of the
Method of Difference, p. 398. And as the second killing of the
same dead man is impossible, no experiment can be exactly in-
stituted to apply the method of difference in this case. The
completion of the argument must be by demonstrative deduction.
Thus this scientific canon of induction receives an apt illustra-
tion from this employment of ifc in the rigid science of juris-
prudence ; and the correctness and usefulness of the canon is
sj)lendidly evinced in this great instance.

This seems the proper place, also, to state and explain the re-
lations between inductive inference and parole-testimony. We
will do this by resuming our supposition. Just when the pros-
ecutors are in the full tide of their ingenious and very highly
probable circumstantial argument to A. B.'s guilt, the defence
introduce an eye-witness named M. On examining him, it is evi-
dent that M. is naturally competent to have been an eye-witness
of the killing, that is to say, that no natural impossibility of his
having witnessed it, as from a demonstrated alibi during the
night when it happened, exists. But M. testifies that he lodged
in the room with the dead man on that night, and saw him killed
by another agency than A. B.'s; we ^vill say, for instance, by the
dead man's own suicidal hand. The prosecution may, of course,
disparage the credihility of this witness by raising the question,
Why his testimony has remained so long latent ? Let us, then,
to clear away this complication, suppose further, that M. ex-
plains this reasonably ; as, by showing that as he rushed horri-
fied from the scene of the tragedy through the darkness to sum-
mon other "witnesses and assistance, he had been suddenly
kidnapped and detained by his own enemies. What is now the
effect of this parole-evidence as against the circumstantial ?
The learned judge rules that, unless the prosecution have valid
grounds for impugning M.'s credibility, their circumstantial evi-
dence breaks down wholly before it. They reply that they can-
not impugn M.'s credibiHty. The judge then instantly decides
that they have no case ; dechnes to hear further argument, and

432 IXDUCTIYE LOGIC DISCUSSED.

if the prosecution will not take liis advice to discliarge the ac-
cused bj a " nolle jJ'^osequi,'' instructs the jury to acquit. The
industry and ingenuity of the prosecution are no less than they
"were. But it is lofficallv "uorthless asrainst the knowledge of an
admitted eye-wdtness. The analysis on which this correct con-
clusion grounds itself, is similar to the previous. It is admitted
by all that this killing may hare been preceded and attended by
other circumstances than those ascertained in the circumstantial
evidence. Unless the induction is of that exclusive and demon-
strative sort which proves that the possible unkno^^-n cu'cum-
stances cannot have heen material to the causation of the kiUing,
and therefore could not, if known, shake the conclusion that
A. B.'s act was the cause; then there is a remaining probability
that the cause was not in A. B., but in those omitted antecedents.
Hence, when M. testifies, he places the causation there, where
confessedly there is room for it to be placed. His testimony is
legitimate, and goes with the whole weight of the moral credi-
bihty he deserves, to establish the fact against the hypothesis.

We thus learn that unless the induction be positively demon-
strative, it must give way in the presence of any adequate intelli-
gent parole-evidence affirming a diiferent cause for the phenome-
non. Another more popular reason supports this conclusion.
Does one say, " The Hving -svitness may be dishonest or deceived ;
but my facts and inductive argument are wholly dispassionate,
impartial, and valid"? He forgets that his facts also have no
better foundation than the professed eye-vdtnessing of some
human witness. Does he say, " They are facts ; for I saw them " ?
He is but a human vdtness. Or, if he derives his facts from the
observations of others, they are mere human vsitnesses. But
the facts are a premise of his inductive logic. The inference
cannot be more vahd than its premise. It thus appears that it
is wholly unreasonable to claim superiority for an induction over
testimony, for this is as though one should claim that " testimony
is stronger than testimony." The only consistent meaning would
be the arrogant assumption that " my testimony is honest and
the other's dishonest." This conclusion, that competent testi-
mony is superior to any except an absolute exclusive induction,
is practically accepted by all sound physicists. Let all the facts
previously known tend to refer the effect to a supposed cause, so

APPLICATIONS OF INDUCTION ANT) ANALOGY. 433

that the scientific world is almost prepared to accept it as a law ;
if one competent observer arises, testifying to another actual
cause for the effect, seen by him to produce it in a single case,
the other hypothesis is withdrawn. For science admits that here
is a ease which cannot be reduced under it. An illustrious in-
stance will be remembered in the first telescopic examinations of
Galileo. He saw that the planet Yenus was gilibous at a time
and in a way she would not have been according to the Ptolemaic
hypothesis. That one observation, with men of true science,
made an end of the Ptolemaic theory. The only alternatives
were to surrender it, or to say that Galileo did not see Yenus
gibbous at that part of her orbit.

The nature and methods of the inductive logic have now been
discussed purely in their formal aspect. So far as the "sdews
advanced differ from the best ^I'iters, the difference is in favor
of a simplification of the principles, a closer conformity to sound
philosophy, and a natural explanation of what had been left by
others as either imperfections or mysteries of the results. Es-
pecially is it claimed, that the inductive logic is, by our exposi-
tion, rescued from that fatal accusation of incompleteness of
demonstration, with which the greatest previous logicians, as
Hamilton, close their discussions of it. "Whereas they decide so
positively, that no inductive inference can rise above probability ;
the common sense of mankind has always insisted that some in-
ductive inferences do rise above probability, and mankind have,
in all ages, persisted in venturing their lives and interests upon
some indiictive inferences, without having their confidence in
their vaHdity refuted by events. Here was a most awkward
contradiction between common sense and philosophy^ This
contradiction we claim to have reconciled, by showing that some
inductive inferences are apodeictic, not being in truth inferences
of an illegitimate order "from the some to the all," but infer-
ences in a regular syllogism, from a universal necessary judg-
ment. It is always one of the soundest features of a philosophy
that it ratifies and explains the conclusions of common sense.
Our theor}' of induction also bears this signature of truth, that
while it earnestly claims for that branch of logic some demon-
strative conclusions, it gives a natural explanation how men, and
even able scientific men, are continually advancing with con-

VOL. in.— 28

434 INDUCTIVE LOGIC DISCUSSED.

fidence so many faulty and erroneous inductions. This is be-
cause tlie methods of the demonstrative inductions are few,
because they require a rigid compliance with their conditions,
and because, amidst the fascinating complications which so
many physical problems offer, the observance of these safe con-
ditions is often difficult, and demands unusual patience, perspi-
cuity, and candor. Especially is the confused state of these
sciences accounted for, by the fact that the investigators were
proceeding upon erroneous theories of inductive logic, which
failed to discriminate the valid from the imperfectly A^alid pro-
cesses. Mr. J. S. Mill has treated the subject with superior in-
sight, in the main, to any other British or American writer, be-
cause he comes after his able competitors, and because he
brought to this branch of logic the resources of great learning
and acuteness. Now, the reader is requested to note, that while
truth has compelled the criticism and correction of his error as
to the necessary and universal judgment underlying the induc-
tive syllogism, the essential and vital features of his system are
retained ; and that in a form even more practical and useful than
his. These are : 1, That there is a demonstrative induction. 2,
That its essential basis is the universal judgment of cause and
effect. 3, That there are no other methods of discriminating
the valid induction from the invalid, than the five he enumer-
ates ; and that these are only valid when guarded as he directs.
The 23ractical applications of his system are obviously not dis-
turbed, but confirmed, by the theory asserted here against him,
that the fundamental premise is not an empirical but an intui-
tive judgment.

The Inductive Argument Illustrated by Application to Cases.

This discussion wiU be concluded by applying the principles
of logic taught above to a few physical doctrines which have
recently interested the scientific world.

1. That the theory of the equivalency and transformation of
energy has not yet been made more than a hypothesis, was in-
timated on page 387. What is denied is, that it has been ex-
tended as a valid induction to all the energies of inorganic mat-
ter. We have never seen, for its supposed extension to vital
energies, any portion of evidence whatever, or anything more

APPLICATIONS OF INDUCTION AND ANALOGY. 435

tliau groundless assertion. It cannot claim to be an induction,
even as to the forces of inorganic matter, even when tried by the
popular criterion. It does not preclude the rival hypothesis,
that there are as many permanent and distinct powers in matter,
as there are essential properties ; which powers are not annihi-
lated on the completion of their effects, but only restored to an
equlUhynum, in which they exist still as potential tendencies.
This theory is not only not excluded, but accounts for many
cases for which the other theory of the "equivalency and trans-
formation of energy" does not account. The first also solves
successfully the very cases, like that of the absorption of so much
sensible caloric, reappearing in the form of so much elasticity,
which are claimed are as favorable to the latter. Let us sup-
pose that caloric is a persistent and distinct molecular energy,
which never really transforms itself into and disappears in elas-
tic force ; but that the application of the caloric is only the cause
of release of the elastic force from the state of potential tendency
to activity ; while the caloric, having done that work, is itself re-
manded, for the time, to its former potentiality. Then, the
equivalency between the caloric recalled and the elastic force
released, would of course follow. It would be the old case of
the correspondency of action and reaction. But a more serious
defect is, that the theory has not been extended to some ma-
terial energies, as that of gravitation, by any collection of se-
quences giving even the invalid induction jyer enumerationetn
shn2>Ucern . Next, we have seen that the theory- cannot meet the
question, AYhat becomes of the forces radiated outwards from
the exterior bounds of the universe ; and how, on that theory,
can we escaj^e the conclusion that the total aggregate of force,
instead of being persistent and identical, as the theory wishes to
claim, is diminishing, and tends to total cessation and stagna-
tion ? Thus the theoiy fails to meet the gi'and final test stated
on p. 405. Nor would any one individual instance of the theory
(as this : that it is the heat, and not the distinct power of elas-
ticity released by the heat, which lifts the piston in the steam-
cylinder) stand the test of either one of the canons of induction.
Let the reader attempt it, and see for hiinself. And once more :
the ver'tjicat'ioii of the equivalency of what this theory calls the
transformed force, has never been attempted even, except as to

436 INDUCTIVE LOGIC DISCUSSED.

the related energies of caloric and elasticity ; and we suspect the
further verification will ever be impracticable.

It is worthy of inquiry also whether this hypothesis, if adopt-
ed, would not destroy the very foundation of the inductive pro-
cess. That foundation is, " Like causes, like effects." The plu-
rahty of effects is accounted for by referring them correctly to
their different causes. But, according to this theory, tliere are
no different causes — there is but one cause. The search after
efficient cause, which has been proved to be the vital problem of
induction, must be degraded into the inquiry after the uniform
antecedent, an inquiry which, as we showed, could lead to no
assured result.

2. The laws of refraction revealed by the spectroscope are
now supposed to be so established for all worlds as to be relied
on to teach us the chemistry of the heavenly bodies. Let us see
first to what extent those laws are demonstrated for the material
elements of our planet. The analyst proceeds thus, for instance :
"When vapor of sodium is present in an incandescent flame, the
lays of white light coming through that flame, being enlarged
into a spectrum, exhibit certain black lines in certain j^laces.
When the sodium vapor is removed from the flame, those lines
disappear from the spectrum cast by those rays. Now, it may
be claimed that this is a proof, by the method of difference, the
most rigid of all, that sodium always causes those lines in the
spectrum. It is conceded that this may be a valid induction, to
a certain extent. Let us refer to pages 398-405, and we see
that, provided the experimenter can be certain he has made no
change whatever in the flame inspected, nor in the refraction,
save the removal of the sodium vapor, it is proved that sodium
is a cause of those lines. But it is not yet proved to be the o)ily
cause, for similar eflects may be produced by more than one
cause. Let the analysis be extended, then, to all the sixty-six
simple substances catalogued by analytical chemistry, and let it
be tested by experiment that none of the others produce the
same lines in the spectrum. Then it may be considered proven
that sodium is not ojily a cause, but alivays the cause, of those
lines, just so far as, and no farther than, it is proved that
chemistry has already discovered all the elemental material sub-
stances in this world. In the present advanced stage of chemi-

APPLICATIONS OF INDUCTION AND ANALOGY. 437

cal researcli, it is admitted that the probability is very strong
that the sodium vapor is the only cause of those particular lines
in the spectrum. It is certain, by the method of difference, that
it is a cause of them. That is to say, the causation of those
lines is certainly' connected with that metal, either directly, by
its efficiency of them, or relatively, by the constant connection
of both of them with some other efficient still undetected. A
law is revealed which may be relied on as to this earth.

But, as Dr. William B. Carpenter cautioned the admirers of
the spectrum analysis, in his inaugural lecture before the British
Association, the induction does not hold when extended to other
worlds. Its invalidity is not now inferred from the facts that the
pencils of light from the stars are so exceedingly slender, and
that they have to pass through unknown possible influences in
penetrating the whole thickness of our atmosphere, nor from tho
exceeding difficulty of making so entire a separation of these
minute and faint pencils of light in the tube of the spectroscope
from other very minute rays, direct or refracted, travelling on
lines which vary from them by infinitesimal angles, as is neces-
sary in experiments so delicate; for these difficulties concern
rather the practical manipulator than the logician. But the
chasm in the induction is this : all that the most valid applica-
tion of the method of difference can by itself prove is, that A is
one efficient of X. It does not disprove this proposition : that
nature may contain other efficients of X. It may prove that,
coeteris paribus, all A's will produce X. But it does not prove that
all X's are produced by A. The concession which we made as
to earthly chemistry, that all so-called sodium lines are produced
by sodium, rests on a further fact (which is an enumeration of
facts only, and not on an induction) that all the other known sim-
ple substances have been tried and failed to produce the sodiuin
lines, coupled with the probable inference that analytical chemis-
try has been carried so far on this earth, it is tiot likely any
suljstance capable of producing sodium lines remains undetected
among earthly materials. But as to other worlds, we have made
no chemical analyses! "We knoAv not what unknown simple
substances endued with we know not what properties, would be
found there. And obviously, to infer an analysis from this fea-
ture of a spectrum of that world's ray, and then reason about

438 INDUCTIVE LOGIC DISCUSSED.

that spectrum from tliat assumed cmahjsis, is but "reasoning in
a circle." As a demonstration, it is worthless. Nor does it seem
likely that this fatal chasm in its logic can ever be bridged. All
that we can be taught is a possibility of the presence of the same
simple substances, in part, in our world and other worlds. This
possibility receives some probable confirmation from the fact
that some of those substances, as iron and nickel, are found in
meteoric stones; that is, if the theory is valid that these are
fragments of planetary bodies.

3. Another very important application of these logical princi-
ples is to the inductions of geologists concerning the mode of
formation of strata and mineral deposits. The rule has just been
recalled, that the law, "Like causes, like effects," does not au-
thorize its converse, " Like effects reveal the same cause." For,
as is so obviously clear, two independent causes may produce
effects exactly similar. Now, much of the supposed inductive
reasoning of treatises on geology is, in reality, but an application
of this vicious converse. Observation shows us a given stratum
of rock or indurated sand and slime, resulting from sedimentary
deposition from water. The inference is, therefore, all stratified
rocks are sedimentary. And some treatises on geology assume
this unsafe and invalid surmise so absolutely as to vise the words
" sedimentary " and " stratified " as synonyms. A very plain and
useful instance of this sophism is given by the case of the
Italian savant who inferred an immense age for the strata in a
volcanic spot of South Italy, by examining a well. The sides
of this little excavation showed certain strata of volcanic earth
superposed on lava. The savant's assumption was, that all this
earth was formed gradually by disintegration of hard lava ; and
as the process is notoriously slow, the thickness of the beds of
loose earth denoted a vast lapse of time. Now, had he been
certain that disintegration was the only cause of volcanic earth,
his inference might have been worth something. But the heed-
lessness of his logic was put to shame by a very simple state-
ment of fact, made by the peasants. Disintegration of hard
lava was not the only cause of volcanic earth. Another cause
was dust and ashes, showers from the neighboring volcano.
These peasants had been actual eye-witnesses of several such
emissions, which, guided by a favoring breeze, had covered

APPLICATIONS OF INDUCTION AND ANALOGY. 439

their fields with an inch or two of new soil in a single night.
And by the simple light of this other cause, which the great
savant had not thought of, it was clearly shown that the accu-
mulation for which he required many scores of centuries, had
been the actual work of about two hundred years.

To the candid mind these hints are enough. The most care-
ful observer is most fully aware of these facts : that our know-
ledge of the terrestrial energies which have exerted themselves
in our globe, is imperfect ; that the grade of speed at which
known forces are now observed to act, may have been exceed-
ingly different at other times and under other conditions of tem-
perature and climate ; that the causations which would need to
be accurately determined, in order to settle many of these phy-
sical questions, were probably complicated beyond all reach of
our observation and ascertainment at this late day.

4. The evolution theory presents a most interesting and in-
structive case for the application of this logic. Its main points
are : that what we supposed to be distinct genera of animated
beings did not originate in the creation of first progenitors, from
whom all the subsequent individuals descended by a generation
which transmitted, by propagation, precisely the properties es-
sential to the genus ; but that higher genera were slowly evolved
from lower ; that the causes of the differentiations wherein the
more developed individuals differ from their less developed pro-
genitors, are to be found in three unintelligent physical influ-
ences, heredity, the influence of the environment on the being's
powers, and the survival of the fittest. The observed facts from
which this hypothesis claims to derive its induction, may be
grouped under these general statements : that in fact the known
genera of animated beings form a continuous ascending scale,
from the most rudimental up to man, the most highly organized ;
thus suggesting the ascent of organization along this ladder, from
a loAver stage to a higher ; that a multitude of organs and Hmbs
are actually seen to grow from their infantile to their adult states,
under the interaction of their environment and the instinctive
animal exertions of them ; that the conditions of animal existence
are, in the general, such that the individuals possessing most of
the natural vigor, qualifj-ing them to reproduce a strong or a
developed j)rogeny, are most Hkely to survive, while the less

440 INDUCTR^E LOGIC DISCUSSED.

qualified perish ; and tliat observed facts in the breeding of ani-
mals present cases in which the rule does not hold that " Like
produces only its like," but often it produces the slightly imlike,
differing from itself by a slight shade of improvement or deteri-
oration. These facts, the theory claims, when a very long time
is allowed for the slow and irregular, but in the main progressive,
action of the forces they disclose, prove that all animated genera
can be accounted for as the ultimate progeny of the most rudi-
mental protozoon.

The task in hand here is not to give a full refutation of this
theory, bvit to criticize it in the light of the logical principles es-
tabhshed, simply in order to see whether it is an induction. It
appears at once that it has no claim to come under the head of
either method of induction, not even of the loosest, the method
of agreement. Indeed, it cannot be said to have a single instance,
much less an agreeing multitude, in the proper sense of induc-
tive instances. To resort for simplification to our notation, let
A stand for the aggregate of supposed evolutional agencies,
which are the combined cause ; let X stand for the effect, a neio
genus. There has not been presented one instance, as yet, in
which A has been followed by X, even seemingly, A being ac-
companied or unaccompanied by other antecedents, B, C, D,
etc. The utmost which can be claimed is, that a few " varieties"
have been evolved, but no permanent species or gemis, which can
meet the tests of generic character. Even these " varieties "
cannot be proved to be the effects of the supposed evolving phy-
sical causes, since it does not appear that they have evolved
themselves, except when these unintelligent influences were
guided by a rational purpose, as that of the stock-breeder or
bird-fancier. Again, the theory fails as to man, the rational,
and the highest result of the supposed evolution, in that its
energies are unintelligent and blind ; but man has a reason.
There must be enough in the cause to account for the effect.
And it fails as to man and all the lower animals, in that their
organs all display, even down to the lowest, the work of thought-
ful design and the intelligent selection of final cause ; whereas
the evolving energies are all blind and uuintelhgent. Nor has
the first instance been found where the influences of "en^dron-
ment " have evolved a single new organ or physical faculty, in

APPLICATIONS OF INDUCTION AND ANALOGY. 441

the sense necessary to the theory. The facts observed are these :
that when uatnre has implanted the generic organ or function by
regular propagation, but in the infantile state, the "environ-
ment" has presented the occasion, not the cause, for its growtli,
by its own exercise up to its adult strength. The fish's fin grows
by beating the water, in this sense ; the bird's wing by beating
the air ; the child's arm by the wielding of his toys. But where
is the first instance that the environment has evolved a new
organ over and above the generic model ? Where has environ-
ment placed a new fin on a fish's back, or an additional finger on
a youth's hand ? The instances ought to be of this nature to
give any show of an induction. And the organ evolved ought
to become not merely an individual peculiarity, but a permanent
trait transmitted uniformly by propagation.

The canon of the inductive logic requires, again, that all other
possible causes, other than the one claimed in the hypothesis,
shall be excluded by at least some of the known instances. But
the theistic account, which is made entirely probable, to say the
least, by arguments in morals and natural theology, presents an-
other sufiicient cause in the creative power and wisdom. Since
the origin of species antedates, confessedly, all human observa-
tion and history, this cause for it is probable, until atheism is
demonstrated. Even were the evolution theory an induction
from real instances, in which these evolving influences were truly
adequate to the effect, there would be no valid induction until
the theistic cause was positively excluded by a demonstration
of atheism. And to offer the conclusion which would flow from
such an induction, when completed, as sufficient for that athe-
istic demonstration of the non-existence of a Creator, which
alone would complete the induction, this would plainly be "rea-
soning in a circle." The conclusion would have to be assumed
in order to make out the process leading to it. But supposing
there may be a Creator of perfect wisdom and power and full
sovereignty, it is always supposable that he may have seen rea-
sons for clothing his creatures with those very qualities on Avhich
evolution argues against a Creator. Is it said that the regular
gradations of organized life suggest the belief that the higher
forms were evolved from the lower, along the stages of this lad-
der? But the theistic hypothesis suggests, with more j^robabil-

442 iNDucxn'E logic discussed.

ity, the belief that the Creator had reasons for filling all the
stages of this ascending scale with genera and species which are
yet distinct. To lift the former surmise to the faintest approach
to an induction, the latter hypothesis must be precluded.

Once more, the scheme is fatally defective in that it has no
verification. Xot a single new genus, or even individual, has
been presented, or can be evolved by experiment, to confirm the
hypothesis. Indeed, it is impossible, from the nature of the
case, that there can be a verification, since the advocates of the
scheme admit that the latest evolution, that of man, was com-
pleted long before the earhest human history. The most that
can be said for this theory is, that it is an ingenious collection
of guesses, which bear a fanciful, but deceptive, likeness to real
analogies.

So far the pretended argument goes in its simpler form. Its
manifest invalidity constrains some evolutionists, as Le Conte,
to surrender it. But these assert that deeper researches into
the parallelisms of organic relations give a truly inductive ground
for their theory. It is claimed that the likeness between the
stages which Agassiz, chiefly, disclosed in embryology, pale-
ontology, and our existing gradations in natural history, now
called the ontogenic, the phylogenic, and the taxonomic grada-
tions, estabhshes evolution by a solid induction. The animals
now upon the earth form a gradation, through the four grand
di-s-isions of radiates, molluscs, articulates, and vertebrates, from
the lowest and simplest np to the most complicated and highest.
So, evolutionists assert, the li^ang creatures made known by the
fossils as once having lived in paleontologic ages, show the same
gradation. And third, the transformations through which the
foetal organisms, even of the highest species, pass from the ovum
to the adult, exhibit the same gradation. The proposed argu-
ment is, that these analogies give an inductive proof that species
are evolved from species by an equally natural law of evolution.

Let it be again observed that all we need attempt, in criticiz-
ing this supposed argument by the principles of induction, is to
show that the process is invalid. And we would preface the
further criticism by the caveat that we do not admit the parallel-
ism of the three sets of instances in the sense claimed by evolu-
tionists. The paleontologic series, for instance, in order to sup-

APPLICATIONS OF INDUCTION AND ANALOGY. 443

port this pretended evolutionist induction, should be a series of
higher and more comj^lete animal forms succeeding the more
rudimental in time. But such it is not. At each paleontologic
period, some of the four groups of living creatures are found
coexisting, in at least some types of each, and not merely suc-
cessive. The palaeozoic strata are found to contain vertebrate
fishes, along with the radiates and molluscs of that first
period. And, if we may trust Agassiz's assertion, there is no
evidence that the embryonic changes of any individual animal
of a higher group exemplifies all the gradations from the lowest
group up to its own. These mutations of its foetal life only il-
lustrate fully the gradations of the species in its own group.

But, wai\ang for the time these questions of fact, Ave show, in
this pretended induction, this vital defect : it mistakes an anal-
ogy (an imperfect one) in the method of action of certain vital
energies for a causal identity. The essential link of a demon-
strative induction is lacking. If we take, for instance, the
embryonic order of development, all that is proved by the mul-
iitude of cases colligated is, that the individual ova are all
endued with a vital energy which causes, and thus insures, the
groAviih of each individual into the matured type of its own spe-
cies. For such, and such alone, is the result, as observed. In
no single case has an individual ovuin, be its analogy of mode
of development to that of other species what it may, resulted in
an evolution into a different species from its own. Hence,
there is not a particle of inductive evidence that this causal
energy which we see at work is competent to such evolution.
Each individual gives an instance of a develoj)ment through an
embryonic series. True. But in every instance the develop-
ment terminates AA-ithin the strict limits of its own species; and
the induction from the latter set of facts is precisely as broad and
as inexorable as from the former.

Again, the analogies noted all receive their sufficient solution
from another hypothesis, namely this, that they are the expres-
sions of a common plan of thought, by which the creative Mind
voluntarily regulates its creative and providential actions. Now,
as we saw, the conclusion from an induction is not demon-
strated, unless the instances collected preclude all other probable,
and even possible, hypotheses. Here is the other hypothesis.

444 IXDUCTIYE LOGIC DISCUSSED.

not only probable and intrinsically reasonable, but, in the light
of other arguments, certain — the theistic one : that the reason
■why the vital energies wrought in paleontologic creatures in a
way analogous to the way they work now is, that the same
God created and" governed then, and that he sees good reasons
for folloAving, in the different ages, similar types of working. It
might be conceded that the analogies under discussion, if
viewed alone, would be insufficient to prove the existence and
action of a God. Yet they do suffice to show that solution a
probable one. This alone is enough to prove the evolutionist
conclusion invalid.

The argument, then, is not a demonstrative induction. Here
our logical criticism might stop. But it will be instructive to
show how it is confirmed by the positive refutation which other
laws and facts of natural history inflict upon the evolution theory.
This is excluded, as a tenable explanation of the organized uni-
verse, by the foUo^sing instances, which do have, what the pre-
vious analogies have not, an application in strict accordance with
the principles of induction.

1. No existing species has displayed a particle of tendency
towards the change in a single truly specific attribute, within the
longest period of human history. The mummies, as well as the
effigies, of the Hving creatures associated with the oldest Egypt-
ian remains, were found by Cuvier and by Kunth specifically
identical with the same creatures now existing in Egypt. Re-
searches into antiquity have everywhere led to the same result.
Now, if evolution of one species from another is to be induct-
ively proved, some instances at least tending to the result must
be adduced. The fact that all human knowledge through three
or four thousand years presents no approach to a single in-
stance, is fatal.

2. In paleontology, each species, so far as kno^wTi from its
fossils, has remained absolutely fixed during the continuance
of its period. It is very true, that a species may be found in a
subsequent cosmical period, shoeing resemblances to, and im-
provements on, a given extinct species of the previous cosmical
period. But this fact makes nothing for evolution, because
science shows that there has been, between the two periods and
their two sets of hving creatures as two wholes, a clear breach.

APPLICATIONS OF INDUCTION AND ANALOGY. 445

interrupting the natural and regular forces of reproduction. The
evolutionist must show some instance where, Avithin the limits of
some one cosmical period, a different species has been naturally
evolved from one simpler than itself.

3. If the existence of the higher forms of Ufe were accounted
for by slow evolutions from the lowest, then the paleontologic
history should unquestionably present us with this state of facts :
First, with a period of the simplest forms, as the radiates ; then,
afterwards, with a period of more developed forms, as moUuscs ;
then with the stiU higher, as the articulates; and then with a
period of the highest. But the state of the facts is exactly the
opposite. All the paleontologic periods give us some of the four
groups contemporaneously.

4. The methods of nature, in the formation of the four groups,
are essentially different. While some of the species belonging
to one group have a higher organization than others, they all
display a community of plan in their structure. But when we
pass to another group, we meet a different plan. Hence we in-
fer that even if we could do what has never been done, find an
actual case of the evolution of a species from a lower one of the
same group, the barriers separating the groups as grand divi-
sions would still be insuperable. Their several plans of struc-
ture are too different for the transmutation of one into another.

5. Men speak of organic life as if its different species formed
one regular and continuous series "from the monad up to man."
This is found to be a misconception. The animal kingdom is
composed of a number of partial series. When the attempt is
made to range aU these in one single continuous series, fatal dis-
locations appear. The line of progress is not a continuous as-
cending line.

6. The theory of evolution assigns great force to the influence
of "environment," in developing organs into those of a new
species. But naturaUsts tell us that they find a number of the
most diversified types existing and prospering together for long
ages under identical circumstances. But, were evolution triie,
the identity of the whole environment ought to be working an
assimilation of the various types subjected to it. Again, identi-
cal species are found persisting for long ages under the most
■diversified environments. These facts show that there has been

446 IXDUCTIYE LOGIC DISCUSSED.

deposited within eacli species its own form of vital energy, which,
resists differentiation, and insists, against any influence of a
changed environment, on reproducing only its own type. The
rational inference is, that either each species is eternal, an im-
possible proposition, or else each points to an extra-natural
Power, which deposited its specific vital energy in it at its be-
ginning.

And that Pov:ei\ in the last place, was Mind, because every
adaptation of organs to their functions, every reappearing an-
alogy of structures in successive cosmical periods, every relation
instituted between the individual and its environment or its
fellow-creatures, discloses thotight. But evolution is claimed to
be only a physical process.

Such is the use of the observed facts of the animal kingdom,
as sanctioned by the true principles of the inductive logic. The
result of this correct colligation is to show that evolution cannot
be true.

A leading American evolutionist ^ insists that we shall accept
the instance of the cock developed from the egg as the true type
of his evolution theory ; and he claims that every such instance
gives him an inductive argument by analogy to support that
theory. I cite this because it suggests precisely the conclusive
points with which I close this refutation of evolution. The in-
stance gives me two lines of remark, each fatal to the theory.

First, it betrays the most sophistical and misleading confusion
between two concepts entirely distinct; a confusion by which,
I observe, evolutionists generally cheat themselves and their
readers. They confound development with evolution, which
is an essentiallj' different thing. The production of the cock
from the egg is a case of development, which is the gradual
enlargement and completion of an individual adult organism
from its individual specific germ by laws of growth absolutely
defined in each case by the limits of the species. Such de-
velopment everybody admits, whether a rustic or a scientific
man. For the world is full of it ; every animal, including the
human, growing to its adult size from its foetal germ, every
oak growing from its acorn, every corn stalk from its seed, is an
instance of this development. But the proposition of evolution-

' Evolution and its Relation to Religioiis Thought, by Joseph LeConte.

APPLICATIONS OF INDUCTION AND ANALOGY. 447

ists is wholly another matter ; its claim is that whole new species
are gradually grown from organic germs which were at first out-
side their own limits of species. Now every instance of that de-
velopment which we all beheve in takes place strictly within the
lines and Hmitations of the energies of its own species, deposited
by God in the specific germs. Every instance of evolution of
species, had such ever occurred, would have taken place in ex-
press violation of these lines and limitations of specific energies.
Here is a fatal breach of analogy between the two sets of in-
stances. The very point in debate is, whether these distinctive
limitations of species uniformly govern in each case of develop-
ment? Every instance of development known to science goes
to j)rove that they do ; the very point of the evolution hypothesis
is to claim that they do not. It is, therefore, but scurvy
sophistry to present us these admitted instances of development
of individuals as analogical proofs of exactly the opposite law in
the evolutional species.

Second, we claim that the case of the growth of the cock from
the egg is a fairly representative instance of all the cases in
which we find organic nature doing her wondrous work. For
every fact marking the origin of the cock from the egg finds its
just parallel in a manner in which every other organism in the
world, vegetable and animal, has arisen. The essential fact in
every case is that the organic germ from which we see the de-
velopment proceed, has owed its own existence to a previous
adult organism. This universal fact destroys the evolution hy-
pothesis and establishes that of the Bible. (See Gen., chapters
i.jii.) First, the adults created by God "producing seed after
their kind"; then, the subsequent generations developed from
these seeds within the strict lines of their limits. For, if the
evolution hypothesis has any proof at all, it is the inductive
proof. The only data of the inductive argument are observed
facts. Where there are no facts to ground it, there is no argu-
ment. Here, then, every fact in the world is against the evolu-
tion argument. For nobody in the world ever knew of an egg
capable of hatching a cock, which was not laid by a previous
existing adidt hen. Thus every fact of observation jiroves that
organisms began by creation, and not by evolution.

Now the evolutionist may retort that nobody ever knew of a

448 INDUCTIVE LOGIC DISCUSSED.

lien wliicli was not procliicecl from a previous egg. He vnll say :
^'Here is a full Roland for my Oliver;" tliat lie thus proves the
egg Avas before the hen at least, as well as I proved that the hen
was before the egg. But I reply: It is not true that nobody
ever saw a hen which was not the j^i'oduct of a previous egg.
Adam did. But the evolutionist will demur that Adam seeing
the hen which never came from an egg is an unscientific assump-
tion, because theological, and not to be admitted in this debate
(of which last conclusion the only major premise seems to be
that nothing theological is true ; which, if admitted, is an equiva-
lent proposition to this, viz., that evolutionism is, of course,
atheism). But for argument's sake we waive this. The state of
the debate would then be : that, while nobody ever saw an egg
"which did not proceed from the previous hen, on the other
hand, nobody since Adam ever saw a hen which did not pro-
ceed from a previous egg. So it would appear at this stage,
there are inductions equally good, one proving that the hen was
before the egg, the other proving that the egg was before the
hen. But, if we may not listen to Adam's testimony, there are
other inductive facts fatal to the hypothesis that the egg was
before the hen. One fact is this : that in order to produce the
adult fowl there must not only be an egg but a hen to hatch it.
According to the course of nature (and if there were any evolu-
tion it would be a purely natural process) the parent hen's incu-
bation is as necessary as the egg. So, then, the hen must be
before the egg. But worse yet for evolution, the egg which has
not been preceded by the copulation of the male with the hen
can never hatch a fowl with or without incubation, natural or
artificial. And I rest upon the fact that this is true absolutely
and universally of every egg kno'svu to human observation. So,
then, it is proved that not only was a hen before the first egg
but a cock also. The opposite induction remains without a
single fact to build on. It is overthrown by absolutely every
fact known to human observation. It is, therefore, equally an
insult to logic and to common sense.

Let us make another apphcation of these logical principles,
and that the most important of all. It concerns the limits of
the ajjosteriori inference from similarity of residts to identity of
cause, concerning the origin of the structures composing the

APPLICATIONS OF INDUCTION AND ANALOGY. 449

crust of our earth. If theism is admitted to be not demon-
strated, but even possible, then, according to the rules of induc-
tion, such inference from naturalness of structure to natural
origin is inconclusive. This follows from two of its rules : first,
the analogical argument from similarity of result to identity of
cause, must give way before competent and credible parole evi-
dence. The supposed but invalid argument is : we see natural
agencies producing this and that structure ; therefore, all similar
structures are of natural origin. But if there be a creative God,
there is a different sufficient cause for the origin of the earlier.
And if a witness appears who may be naturally competent to
testify, his testimony wholly supersedes the evidence of the sup-
posed analogy. The only way to uphold it is to attack the
credibility of that witness. If his credibility is not successfully
impeached, the analogical argument must yield before it.

But such a parole-witness appears in the book known as the
Christian Scriptures. It assumes to testify that there is a crea-
tor, and that he here gives his own witness to his supernatural
creation of the first structures. The value of any induction from
naturalness of traits to a natural origin of those structures, must
depend therefore upon the other question : whether this witness
is competent and credible. Some persons attempt to evade their
logical obhgation here by saying, that these are theological ques-
tions with which physical science, as such, has no concern ; that
they restrict themselves properly to the lights of this department,
and, in assigning a natural origin to these structures, speak
only for science. But this is a violation of the principles of nat-
ural induction, which must necessarily include some adjustment
of the relations between analogy and testimony ; seeing the truth
of the very facts, claimed as analogical, itself rests on testimony.
Further, the questions, whether there is a creator, and whether
there have been creative causations, enter into this argument, not
as theological, but as natural questions. In their relations to
the inductive problem, they are as purely physical questions, as
the question whether a given rock is the result of fusion or sed-
imentary deposition from water. A moment's reflection will
show the justice of this statement. And hence it follows that an
a posteriori analogical argument on this topic is entirely frag-
mentary and inconclusive, until the claims of this parole -witness

Voi^ III.— 29.

450 INDUCTIVE LOGIC DISCUSSED.

are entertained and adjusted. The historical and the physical
parts of the argument cannot be thus rent asunder and legiti-
mately pursued apart.

The second rule of induction which aj^plies to show this rea-
soning invalid, is that pointed out on p. 437. If there may be
two antecedents, either of which is competent efficiently to pro-
duce an effect (naming one of them A, and the effect X), the
closest possible induction can only prove that all A's will, cceteris
paribus, produce X ; but cannot prove that all X's are produced
by A. Now, until atheism is dev%onstrated, another competent
cause for natural structures may be supposed as possibly exist-
ing in the existence and action of a God. And whatever is the
strength of the probable or demonstrative e^ddence that there is
a God, from whatever valid quarter drawn, there is just so much
probabihty of error in the attempted induction, which assigns a
natural origin to all structures. To attempt to exclude the di-
vine cause by the force of this a posteriori analogy is to reason
in a circle ; because the validity of the analogy depends wholly
on the prior exclusion of the divine cause. Second, a wise Cre-
ator must have had some final cause guiding his action. We
should not be so presumptuous as to surmise in advance what
particular final cause prompted a given creative act, but when
his own subsequent action has disclosed it, we are on safe ground.
It is always safe to conclude that the object for which a wise and
sovereign Creator produced a given thing is the object to which
we see him devoting it. When, therefore, we see him in his
subsequent providence subjecting all things to the reign of nat-
ural law, we may safely conclude that, when he created them,,
he designed to subject them to natural law. But that which is
to be ruled by natural law must needs be thoroughly natural in
traits. Hence this Creator must have made the first structures,
which in their origin were supernatural, in their properties en-
tirely natural. Whence it follows that the inference from natu-
ralness of qualities to a natural origin would be, as to those
structures, wholly worthless. Let it be repeated also : that
whatever probability or certainty there is of God's existence,
from any source of evidence, just so much evidence is there of
this defect in the naturalistic argument. Or, in other words, to
make it conclusive, its advocate must demonstrate, not surmise.

APPLICATIONS OF INDUCTION AND ANALOGY. 451

the truth of atheism. But John Foster has shown that this is
impossible.

Third. The argument is pecuharly conclusive as to living crea-
tures. If there was a Creator, he created the first individuals of
a species to be, by reproduction, the heads of the species. But
in order to do this, these first parents must have been created
natural. What are the qualities connoted by any name of spe-
cies ? The most accurate answer which the science of natural
history itself can make is: they are precisely those which are
transmitted regularly from parents to progeny in the propagation
of the species. Then, these first individuals, in order to fulfil
their final cause, to be the heads of their species, must have been,
while supernatural in origin, as thoroughly natural in qualities
as any of their natural offspring.

Fourth. If this be denied, then we must assign a natural par-
ent before the first parent of each species. Thus we should bo
involved in an infinite series, in a multitude of instances, without
cause external to themselves ; a result which science herself has
discarded as an impossible absurdity. Suppose, for explanation,
that an observer has found some part of the very organism of
one of those first heads of species, which on the theistic scheme,
was directly created by God. He would, of course, find in this
fossil every j^roperty of the natural structure. Yet he cannot
infer thence a natural origin for it, because on the hypothesis it
is absolutely a first thing. But suppose that he may assign for
it a natural origin. That origin then will be, propagation by
birth from prior parents. And should a fossil organ of that
parent be found, the same argument would apply again ! Thus
we should be driven to a ridiculous regresstis. It is concluded,
therefore. Math the most perfect logical rigidit}', that the argu-
ment from naturalness of structure to a natural origin is incon-
clusive, until the impossibility of creative agency in any age
prior to authentic human testimony is demonstrated.

Fifth. This absurd refjressus may be shown in a general way,
by testing this analogical argument upon the " nebular hypothe-
sis "; that guess which the atheist La Place suggested as only a
possible h}"pothesis for the origin of the universe, and which
some Christian j^hysicists now seem so ready to adopt, without
proof, as the real account of the matter. Let us suppose the

452 KDUCTIYE LOGIC DISCUSSED.

scientific observer from some otlier system watcliing tliis vast in-
candescent mass of " star-dust," rotating around an axis of mo-
tion, witli wliicli tlie nebular laypotliesis begins. If lie uses the
analogical reasoning v,^e are criticizing, lie must proceed thus:
riatter is naturally inert ; momentum must therefore be derived
irom some prior material force. This rotary motion, which the
nebular hypothesis supposes to be the first state, cannot be the
first state. Again, vapor implies evaporation. Sensible heat
suggests latent heat. Hence this other first state of incandescent
volatilization cannot be the first state. Thus, on this logic, be-
fore each first state there must have been another first state.

' ' Beneath the lowest deep,
Another depth still threatening to devour me, opens wide."

This, then, is the eternity of " Katuralismus " — it is athe-
ism.

This wholesome limitation of analogical inference has been
sometimes met vdth disdainful resistance. It has been said that
it would subvert the very basis of natural science. It is ex-
claimed, "If we may not securely reason, 'Like causes, like
effects,' the very lever of scientific discovery is taken from us."
The answer is very simple : that there is no intention to rob
science of her prime organon, "Like causes, like effects." The
main drift of this treatise has been to defend and explain it.
Only we do not desire to see the votaries of inductive science
disgracing themselves by the very shallow blunder (a blunder
which the school boy's class-book of Logic points out) of mis-
taking an 'all important proposition for its erroneous converse,
" Like effects, the same cause." This is reall}- the extent of our
caution. The inductive logic is in no danger of being cramped
or restricted by theology within the proper domain of natural
science. That domain is the known present and the known past
of human history, where testimony and experience give us sufii-
cient assurance of the absence of the supernatural. In this field
natural induction is useful and legitimate ; it has been the hon-
ored instrument of splendid and beneficent achievements. Let
physicists continue to employ it there, to the full, for the further
benefit of mankind and the illustration of the Creator's wisdom
and glory. But in the unknown eternit}- of the past prior to
human history, it has no place. It is Hke the mariner's compass

APPLICATIONS OF INDUCTION AND ANALOGY. 453

carried into the stellar spaces. We know tliat tlie poles of this
globe have a certain attraction for it, and, therefore, on this
globe it is a precious guide. But away in the regions of Arctu-
rus or the Pleiades, where we are not certain whether the
spheres have poles, or whether they are magnetic, we are not
authorized to follow it.

One more application will be made, and this to a supposed
social and moral induction; in order to exhibit the fitness of
the logical canons for ethical as well as physical science. The
case is that of the colligation of instances, so often presented by
the enthusiastic fanatics in the cause of secular education, as a
proof of their proposition that this species of education promotes
virtue and suppresses crime. The supposed evidence is, that
the statistics of prisons, penitentiaries, and criminal convictions
usually show a ratio of illiterate to educated criminals consider-
ably larger than the ratio of illiterate to lettered citizens in the
commonwealth. The governor of an American commonwealth,
for instance, reported that of all the convicts in his state-peni-
tentiary for ten years, only a little more than ten per cent, could
read and write. And he presented this as a conclusive demon-
stration that illiteracy was the cause, and a knowledge of letters
would be the sufficient cure, of crime.

Now, a very simple application of the logical criticism dis-
closes the in conclusiveness of this popular argument. The effect
to be accounted for is, breaches of statute laws. The observed
antecedent to this effect is, in a large majority of cases in this
State, ignorance of letters. Obviously, this is but an induction
per enumerationeiii shnpUcem, which gives no proof whether the
sequence gives a i^ost hoc or a j>ro2)ter hoc. The argument offers
neither canon of induction to complete the separation. We have
in this enumeration nothing whatever to teach us whether the
true efficient of the crimes does not lie, hitherto unnoted, be-
tween the supposed antecedent, illiteracy, and the effect. The
pretended argument gives us no ground whatever for excluding
this other obvious hypothesis, that something else may have
been the true cause of the crimes, of which cause the illiteracy
itself may be also another coordinate effect.

As soon as another equally authentic enumeration is com-
pared with the previous one, the justice of this suspicion is fully

454 INDUCTIVE LOGIC DISCUSSED.

confirmed. Furtlier study of tlie statistics of crime slio',vs, that
while American prisons contain a larger percentage of illiterate
criminals than American society contains of illiterate free citi-
zens, yet the ratio of cinininals to the v:hole nuinher of citizens in
any given community is unif ormly ya/' larger inhere all, or nearly
all, adults can read and icrite, and far smaller where fewer of
the adults can read and write. For instance, in Boston, the
boastful metropolis of free schools, with scarcely an adult who
could not read and write, the census of 1850 showed that the
white persons in jails, penitentiaides, and almshouses bore to
the whole Avhite population the ratio of one in every thirty-four.
But in Richmond, the capital of a State endlessly reviled for its
illiteracy, the same classes of whites bore to the whole number
of white citizens the ratio of one to every one hundred and
twelve ! The difference in favor of the less lettered communities,
as revealed by subsequent censuses, is still more astounding;
and this, when extended to the whole South, as compared with
the North, and as deduced by Northern students of statistics.

Now, were these enumerations of sequences employed in the
same illogical way, they would seem to demonstrate exactly the
opposite conclusion: that tJie knoioledge of letters causes CTime,
and illiteracy causes virtue. This is a sufficiently biting demon-
stration of the worthlessness of the pretended induction. The
true solution to which the comparison of the two enumerations
points, is this : that neither letters nor illiteracy cause crime in
America, but another combination of moral causes, to which
these states of the population are themselves related as effects.
In any given prison will be found a majority of prisoners who
cannot read and write. This does not prove that the possession
of these arts is preventive of crime, as the other statistics show.
But as American society happens to be constituted, the rearing
of children without a knowledge of letters has happened to be
the usual accompaniment of a domestic condition of penury and
moral degradation, while families of substance and domestic
morality have usually given letters to their children. Thus it is
made j^lain that it is not the illiteracy, but the penury and do-
mestic degradation which are the real causes of crime. The
illiteracy turns out not to be the cause at all, but an incident or
appendage which the domestic habits of Americans have con-

APPLICATIONS OF INDUCTION AND ANALOGY. 455

nected with the real cause, the combination of want and do-
mestic degradation.

But when, by the intrusive activity of the civil government,
the children of destitute and morally degraded families are uni-
versally invested with the arts of reading and writing, without
that moral and economical elevation of the parents and children,
to work which the State and State schools are so nearly impo-
tent, then the result is a fearful increase in the ratio of criminals
to the whole number of citizens. The explanation is, that it is
the want and family degradation which together is the main
efficient cause of crime, and which the knowledge of letters,
while those continue, rather aggravates than checks.

SPimiOUS RELIGIOUS EXCITEMENTS/

IT is believed all tliouglitful Christians are alive to the fact
that religious excitements, which consist of temporary move-
ments of the emotions devoid of any saving operation of the
Truth on the reason and conscience, are equally frequent and
mischievous in America. This judgment not seldom expresses
itself in very queer and inaccurate forms. Thus : good brethren
write to the religious journals grateful accounts of a work of
grace in their charges, and tell the editors that "they are happy
to say, the work has been purely rational and quiet, and at-
tended by not the slightest excitement." They forget that the
efficacious (not possibly, tempestuous) movement of the feelings
is just as essential a part of a true religious experience, as the
illumination of the intellect by divine truth ; for indeed, there is
no such thing as the imj)lantation of practical principle, or the
right decisions of the will, without feeling. In estimating a work
of divine grace as genuine, we should rather ask ourselves
whether the right feelings are excited, and excited by divine
cause. If so, we need not fear the most intense excitement.
This misconception is parallel to the one uttered by public
speakers, when they assure their hearers that, designing to show
them the respect due to rational beings, and to use the honesty
suitable to true patriots, "they shall make no apjDcal to their
feelings, but address themselves only to their understandings."
This is virtually impossible. On all practical subjects, truth is
only influential as it stimulates some j)ractical feeling. There is
no logical appeal of the rhetorical nature which does not include
and appeal to feeling. Does the orator proclaim, for instance,
that waiving all appeals to passion, he will only address his
hearers' intellects to prove what is for their interest, or "for their
honor," or "for the good of their country"? What is he reaUy
doing except aj)pealing to the emotions of desire for wealth, or
love of applause, or patriotism?

' From The Presbyterian Quarterly, October, 1887.
456

SPURIOUS RELIGIOUS EXCITEMENTS. 457

In the Southern Preshyterian Review, 1884, I presented a clis-
cnssion on tlie psycliology of tlie feelings. I wish to recall a
few of the fundamental positions there established . The func-
tion oi feeling is as essential to the human spirit, and as ever
present, as the function of cognition. The two are ever com-
bined, as the heat-rays and the light-rays are intermingled in
the sunbeams. But the consciousness intuitively recognizes the
difference of the two functions, so that it is superfluous to define
them. "Feeling is the temperature of thought." The same
kind of feeling may differ in degree of intensity, as the heat-ray
in the brilliant winter sunbeam differs from that in the fiery
glare of the "dog days"; but the thermometer shows there is
still caloric in the most wintry sunbeam, and even in the block
of crystal ice. So a human spirit is never devoid of some degree
of that feeling which the truth then engaging the intelligence
tends to excite. No object is or can be inducement to volition
unless it be apprehended by the soul as being both in the cate-
gory of the true and of the good. But, that function of soul by
which the object is taken as a good, is desire, an act of feeling.
"Whence it follows, that an element of feeling is as essential to
every rational volition as an act of cognition. The truly dif-
ferent sorts of feelings were distinguished and classified. But
this all important division of them was seen to be into the pas-
sions, and the active feehngs ; between those impressions upon
the sensibility of the soul, caused from without, and in receiving
which the soul is itself passive, and its spontaneity has no
self-determining power (as pain, panic, sympathy) on the one
hand, and on the other hand those subjective feehngs which,
while occasioned from without, are self-determined by the spon-
taneity from within and in Avliich the soul is essentially active,
(as desire, benevolence, ambition, etc.)

It may be asked here : Does the writer intend to rest the
authority of his distinction between genuine and spurious relig-
ious experiences on a human psychology? By no means. The
Scriptures are the only sui-e source of this discrimination. Its
declarations, such as that sanctification is otAj by revealed truth,
its anthropology, its doctrine of redemption, and its examples of
saving couA'ersions, give the faithful student full guidance as to
the conduct of gospel work, and the separation of the stony-

458 SPURIOUS RELIGIOUS EXCITEMENTS.

ground hearers from the true. But it is claimed that the psy-
chology outlined above is the psychology of the Bible. It is
that theory of man's powers everywhere assumed and postulated
in Scripture. It gives that theory of human action on which all
the instances, the narratives, and the precepts of Scripture
ground themselves. Hence these mental laws and facts are of
use, not as the mistress, but as the hand-maid of Scripture, to
explain and illustrate those cautions which the Bible gives us.

One inference is simple and clear. The excitement of mere
sensibilities, however strong or frequent, can oflfer no evidence
whatever of a sanctified state. The soul is passive in them;
their efficient cause is objective. An instinctive susceptibility
in the soul provides the only condition requisite for their rise
■when the outward cause is apphed. Hence the excitement of
these sensibilities is no more e\'idence of change or rectification
in the free agency, than the shivering of the winter "svayfarer's
limbs when wet by the storms. Xow the doctrine of Scriptui'e
is that man's spontaneity is, in his natural state, wholly disin-
clined and made opposite (yet freely) to godliness, so that he has
no ability of -n-ill for any spiritual act pertaining to salvation.
But it is promised that, in regeneration, God's people shall be
willing in the day of his power. He so enlightens their minds
in the knowledge of Christ, and renews their vnlls, that they are
both persuaded and enabled to embrace Jesus Christ. The very
spontaneity is revolutionized. Xow the stimulation of merely
passive sensibilities, in Avhich the will has no causal part, can
never be evidence of that saving change. Xo evidence of it
appears, until the subjective desu*es and the will exhibit their
change to the new direction. That fear, that selfish joy, that
hope, that sympathy are excited, proves nothing. But when the
soul freely exercises a " hungering and thirsting after righteous-
ness," hatred of sin, desire of God's favor, love of his truth, zeal
for his honor, this evinces the sanctifying revolution.

Shall we conclude then that the excitement of the passive
sensibihties by the pastor is whoU}' useless ? This class of feel-
ings presents the occasion (not the cause) for the rise of the
subjective and spontaneous emotions. This is aU. It is this
connection which so often misleads the mental analyst into a
confusion of the two classes of feelings. The efficient cause may

SPURIOUS RELIGIOUS EXCITEMENTS. 459

be restrained from acting by the absence of the necessary occa-
sion ; this is true. But it is equally true, that the occasion, in
the absence of the efficient cause, is powerless to leaving any
effect. If the pastor aims to move the sensibilities merely for
the purj)ose of gaining the attention of the soul to saving truth,
and presents that truth faithfully the moment his impression is
made, he does well. If he makes these sensibilities an end,
instead of a means, he is mischievously abusing his people's
soids.

People are ever prone to think that they are feeling religi-
ously because they have feelings round about religion. Their
sensibihties have been aroused in connection with death and
eternity, for instance ; so, as these are religious topics, they sup-
pose they are growing quite religious. The simplest way to clear
away these perilous illusions is, to ask AYhat emotions, con-
nected "sxdth rehgious topics as their occasions, are natural to the
carnal man? These may be said to be, first, the emotions of
taste, or the mental-aesthetic; second, the involuntary moral
emotion of self-blame, or remorse ; third, the natural self-inter-
ested emotions of fear and hope, and desire of future security
and enjoyment; and fourth, the emotion of instinctive sympathy.
The following conclusions concerning these feelings need ' only
to be stated, in order to be admitted.

The £esthetic feeling may be as naturally stimulated by the
features of sublimity and beauty of God's natural attributes, and
of the gospel-story, as by a cataract, an ocean, a starlit sky, or a
Shakespearean hero. Now it is most obvious that the move-
ments of taste, in these latter cases, carry no moral imperative
whatever. They have no more power to reform the ■will than
strains of music or odors of flowers. Yet how many souls are
deluded into supposing that they love God, duty, and gospel-
truth, because these aesthetic sensibilities are stimulated in con-
nection with such topics!

When the ethical reason pronounces its judgment of wrong-
fulness upon any action or principle, this may be attended by
the feeling of moral reprehension. If it is one's own action
which must be condemned, the feeling takes on the more pun-
gent form of remorse. But this feeling is no function of the
soul's spontaneity. Its rise is pureh* involuntary; its natural

460 SPURIOUS EELIGIOUS EXCITEMENTS.

effect is to be tlie penal retributiou, and not the restrainer of
sin.

How completely this feeling is disconnected with the correct
regulation or reformation of the T^-ill, appears from this: that
the transgressor's will is usually striving Avith all his might not
to feel the remorse, or to forget it, Avhile conscience makes him
feel it in spite of himself. A Judas felt it most keenly while he
rushed to self-destruction. It is the most prevalent emotion of
hell, which gives us the crowning proof that it has no power to
purify the heart. But many transgressors are persuaded that
they exercise repentance because they feel remorse for consci-
ous sins. Man's native selfishness is all-sufficient to make him
desire the pleasurable, or natural good, and fear and shun the
painful, or natural evil. Those desires and aversions, with the
fears and hopes which expectation suggests, and the correspond-
ing ten-ors and joys of anticipation, may be stimulated by any
natural good or evil, more or less remote, the conception of which
occupies the mental attention distinctly. Just as the thought-
less child dreads the lash that is expected in the next moment,
and the more thoughtful person dreads the lash of next week or
next month, just so naturally a carnal man, who is intellectually
convinced of his immortality and identity, maj' dread the pains,
or rejoice in the fancied pleasures, of another life. He may fear
death, not only with the unreasoning instinct of the brute, but
also with the rational dread (rational, though purely selfish) of
its penal consequences. Selfishness, with awakened attention
and mental conviction, suffices fully for all this. In all these
feelings there is nothing one whit more characteristic of a new
heart, or more controlling of the evil wiU, than in the mcked
sensuahst's dread of the colic which may follow his excess, or
the determined outlaw's fear of the sheriff. Yet how many de-
luded souls fancy that, because they feel these selfish fears or
joys in connection vnth. death and judgment, they are becoming
strongly religious. And unfortunately they are encouraged hy
midtitudes of preachers of the gospel to make this fatal mistake.
Turretin has distinguished the truth here by a single pair of
phrases, as by a beam of sunlight. He says : Whereas the stony-
ground believer embraces Christ solely pro T>ono jucundo, the
gospel offers him mainly j!?ro hono honesto. True faith desires

SPUEIOUS RELIGIOUS EXCITEMENTS. 461

aud embraces Christ cliieiiY as a Saviour from sin and pollution.
The false believer embraces him onl}' as a Saviour from suflfer-
ing and punishment. Holj Scripture is always careful to repre-
sent Christ in the former light. His " name is Jesus because he
saves his people from their sins." He gives himself to redeera
us from all iniquity, and to purify us unto himself a peculiar
people, zealous of good works. But preachers so prevalently
paint the gospel as God's method of delivering sinners from penal
pains aud bestowing the enjoyment of a sensuous paradise, and
the guilty selfishness of hearers is so exclusively exercised about
selfish deliverance, that we apprehend most men are permitted
to conceive of the gospel remedy solely as a homnn j ucundiini,
a provision for simply j)rocuring their selfish advantage. It is
true that, if asked, Is not the gospel to make you good also?
many of them might reply with a listless "Yes." They have a
vague apprehension that their grasping the honum jucundum is
somehow conditioned on their becoming better ; and they sup-
pose they are willing to accept this uninteresting formality for
the sake of the enjoyment that follows it, just as the epicure
tolerates the tedious grace for the sake of the dainties which
are to come after at the feast. But were one to tell this gour-
mand that the grace was the real chief-end of the feast, and the
eating a subordinate incident thereto, he would be exceedinglv
amazed and incredulous. Such would also be the feeling of
many subjects of modern revivals, if the Bible conception of re-
demption were forced on their minds. Hence, one great reform
in our preaching must be to return to the scriptural presenta-
tion of the gospel in this particular. A grand reform is needed
here. This grovelling, utilitarian conception of redemption must
be banished. Men must be taught that the blessing is only for
them " who hunger and thirst after righteousness," not for those
who selfishly desire to grasp enjoyment only, and to shun pain.
They must be made to see clearly that such a concern does not
in the least differentiate them from reprobate souls in hell, or
hardened felons on earth; not even from the thievish fox caught
in a trap.

The fourth and the most deceptive natural feeling of the car-
nal man is instinctive sympathy. It will be necessary to state
ihe nature and conditions of this feeling. First, it belongs to

462 SPURIOUS RELIGIOUS EXCITEMENTS.

the passive sensibilities, not to the spontaneous appetencies. It
is purely instinctive, appearing as powerfully in animals as in
men. Witness the excitement of a flock of birds over the cries
of a single comrade, and the "stampede" of a herd of oxen.
Next, it is even in man an unintelhgent feeling in this sense :
that if the emotion of another be merely seen and heard, sym-
pathy' is propagated, although the sympathizer understands
nothing of the cause of the feeling he witnesses. We come upon
a child, who is an utter stranger, weeping; we share the sym-
pathetic saddening before he has had time to tell us what causes
his tears. We enter a room where our friends are drowned in
laughter. Before Ave have asked the question, "Friends, what
is the Jest?" we find ourselves smiling. We see two strangers-
afar off exchanging blows ; we feel the excitement stimulating us
to run thither, while ignorant of the quarrel. Sympathy is in
its rise unintellisrent and instinctive. The onlv condition re-
quisite for it, is the beholding of the feeling in a fellow. Third,
this law of feeling extends to all the emotions natural to man.
We so often connect the word with the emotion of grief, that we
overlook its applicability to other feelings, and we forget even
its etymology : Tzad-o:;, in Greek philosophy, did not mean grief
only, but every exercise of feeling; so aou-ai^trj is to share by
spiritual contagion any 7zat%z we witness in our fellows. We
sympathize with merriment, joy, fear, anger, hope, benevolence,
moral approbation, courage, panic, just as truly as with grief.
Fourth, the nature of the emotion -witnessed determines, without
any volition of our own, the nature of the feeling injected into
us. Sympathy with J03- is a lesser joy. The glow is that of the
secondary rainbow reflecting, but iisually in a weaker degree,
precisely the tints of the primary arch.

The reader is now prepared to admit these conclusions : that
sympathy may infect men with a phase of religious emotion, as
of any other ; that the sympathetic emotions, though thus related
as to their source, have no spiritual character whatever in them-
selves— for they are involuntary, they are unintelligent, they are
passive effects on an instinctive sensibility, giving no expression
to the Mill, and not regulating it nor regulated by it. The ani-
mal feels these sympathies as really as the man.

The reader should notice that these propositions are asserted

SPURIOUS RELIGIOUS EXCITEMENTS. 463

only of the simple sensibility, the immediate reflex of strong
feeling Tvitnessed. It is not denied that the capacity of sympa-
thy is a social trait implanted by a TNdse Creator for practical
purposes. It is the instrumental occasion of many useful results.
Thus, upon the excitement of sympathy with grief follow the
appetency to succor the sufferer, and the benevolent volition.
The first is the occasion, not the cause, of the second. On our
natural sympathy with the actions we ^\'itness, follows our im-
pulse to imitate. But imitation is the great lever of education.
So sympathy has been called the sacred " orator's right arm."
Let us understand precisely what it could and cannot do in
gaining lodgment for divine truth in the sinner's soul. This
truth and this alone is the instrument of sanctification. To
Presbyterians the demonstration of this is superfluous. It is
impossible for the truth to work sanctification except as it is in-
telligentlv received into the mind. Light must reach the heart
through the understanding, for the soul only feels healthily ac-
cording as it sees. To the inattentive mind the truth being
unheard, is as though it were not. Hence it is of prime impor-
tance to awaken the listless attention. Whatever innocently
does this is therefore a useful preliminary instrument for appl}--
ing the truth. This, sympathy aids to effect. The emotion of
the orator arouses the slumbering attention of the sinner, and
temporarih' wins his ear for the sacred word. Another influence
of awakened sympathy may also be conceded. By one applica-
tion of the law of association, the warmth of a feeling existing in
the mind is communicated temporarily to any object coexisting
with it in the mind ; though that object be in itself indifferent to
that soul. The stone dropped into the heated furnace is not
combustible, is no source of caloric ; but by contact it imbibes
some of the heat which flames there, and remains hot for a little
time after it is drawn out. So the mind warmed with emotion,
either original or sympathetic, is a furnace which gives some of
its warmth to truth or concepts coexisting in it, otherwise cold
and indifferent to it. But the warmth is merely temporary.

The whole use, then, of the sympathetic excitement is to catch
the attention and warm it. But it is the truth thus lodged in
the attention that must do the whole work of sanctification.
Here is the all-important discrimination. Attention, sympa-

464 SPUEIOUS EELIGIOUS EXCITEMENTS.

tlietic warmtli, are merely a preparation for casting in the seed
of the Word. The preacher who satisfies himself with exciting
the sympathies, and neglects to throw in at once the vital truth,
is like the husbandman who digs and rakes the soil, and then
idly expects the crop, though he has put in no living seed. The
only result is a more rampant growth of weeds. How often do
we see this mistake committed! The preacher either displays,
in his own person, a high-wrought religious emotion, or stirs
the natural sensibilities by painting in exciting and pictorial
words and gestures, some natural feeling connected by its occa-
sion with a religious topic, as a touching death or other bereave-
ment ; or he stimulates the selfish fears by painting the agonies
of a lost soul, or the selfish desires and hopes by a sensuous
description of the pleasures of heaven. Then, if sympathetic
feeUng is awakened, or the carnal passions of hope, fear and
desire are moved, he acts as though his work were done. He
permits and encourages the hearers to flatter themselves that
they are religious, because they are feeling something round
about religion. I repeat : if this stimulation of carnal and sym-
pathetic feeling is not at once and wisely used, and used solely
as a secondary means of fixing a warmed attention on didactic
truth, which is the sole instrument of conversion and sanctifica-
tion, then the preacher has mischievously abused the souls of
his hearers. The first and most olivious mischief is the encour-
agement of a fatal deception and self-flatter}'. Unrenewed men
are tacitly invited to regard themselves as either born again,
or at least in a most encouraging progress towards that blessing ;
while in fact they have not felt a single feeling or principle which
may not be the mere natural product of a dead heart. This de-
lusion has slain its "tens of thousands."

The reader mil remember the masterly exposition by Bishoj^
Butler of the laws of habit as affecting the sensibilities and
active powers. Its truth is too fully admitted to need argument.
By this law of habit, the sensibilities are inevitably diilled by
repeated impressions. By the same law, the appetencies and
will are strengthened by voluntary erercise. Thus, if impres-
sions on the sensibilities are followed by their legitimate exer-
tion of the active jjowers, the soul as a whole, while it grows
calmer and less excitable, grows stronger and more energetic in

SPURIOUS RELIGIOUS EXCITEMENTS. 465

its activities, and is confirmed in the paths of right action. But
if the sensibihties are stimulated by objects which make no call,
and offer no scope for right action, as by fictitious and unreal
pictures of liiiman passion, the soul is uselessly hackneyed and
worn, and thus depraved. Here we find one of the fundamental
objections to habitual novel reading. The excitement of the
sympathies by warmly colored, but unreal, portraitures of pas-
sions, where there cannot possibly be any corresponding right
action by the reader inasmuch as the agents and sufferers are
imaginary, depraves the sensibilities without any retrieval of the
soul's state in the corresponding cultivation of the active powers.
The longer such reading is continued, the more does the young
person become at once sentimental and unfeeling. The result
is a selfish and morbid craving for excitement, coupled with a
callous selfishness, dead to the claims of real charity and duty.
The same objection lies against theatrical exhibitions, and for
the same reason. Now this species of spurious religious excite-
ment is obnoxious to the same charge. In its practical results
it is fictitious. The merely sensational preacher is no more than
a novelist or a comedian, with this circumstance, that he con-
nects topics, popularly deemed rehgious, with his fictitious
arts. He abuses and hackneys the souls of his hearers in
the same general wa}^, rendering them at once sentimental and
hard, selfishly fond of excitement, but callous to conscience and
duty.

Once more ; spiritual pride is as natural to man as breathing,
or as sin. Its only corrective is sanctifying grace. Let the
suggestion be once lodged in a heai-t not really humbled and
cleansed by grace, that the man is reconciled to God, has " be-
come good," is a favorite of God and heir of glory — that soul
cannot fail to be swept away b}^ the gales of spiritual pride.
Let observation teach us here. Was there ever a deceived
votary of a false religion, of Islam, of Buddhism, of Brahmanism,
of Popery, who was not in reality puffed up by spiritual pride ?
It cannot be otherwise with a deceived votary of a Protestant
creed. The circumstance that there is divine truth in this creed,
which has no vital influence on his heart, is no safeguard. The
only preventive of spiritual pride is the contrition which accom-
jpanies saving repentance. Here, also, is the explanation of the

Vol. III.— 30

466 SPURIOUS EELIGIOUS EXCITEMENTS.

fact, that the heart}' votaries of those professedly Christian
creeds which liave more of Pelagiauism than of gospel iu thern,^
are most bigoted and most hopelessly inaccessible to truth.
Their adamantine shield is spiritual pride, fostered by a spurious
hope, and unchasteued by sovereign grace. Of all such self-
deceivers our Saviour has decided that "the publicans and
harlots enter into the kingdom before them."

These plain facts and principles condemn nearly every feature
of the modern new measure "revival." The preaching and
other religious instructions are shaped with a main view to ex-
cite the carnal emotions and the instinctive sympathies, while
no due care is taken to present saving, didactic truth to the un-
derstanding thus temporarily stimulated. As soon as some per-
sons, professed Christians, or awakened " mourners," are infected
with any lively passion, let it be however carnal and fleeting, a
spectacular display is made of it, with confident laudations of it
as unquestionably precious and saving, with the design of ex-
citing the remainder of the crowd Tvith the sympathetic con-
tagion. Every adjunct of fiery declamation, animated singing,
groans, tears, exclamations, noisy prayers, is added so as to
shake the nerves and add the tumult of a hysterical animal ex-
citement to the sympathetic Avave. Every youth or impressible
girl who is seen to tremble, or grow pale, or shed tears, is as-
sured that he or she is under the workings of the Holy Spirit,
and is driven by threats of vexing that awful and essential Agent
of salvation to join the spectacular show, and add himself to the
exciting pantomime. Meanwhile, most probably their minds
are blank of every intelligent or conscientious ^dew of the truth ;
they had been tittering or whispering a httle while before, during
the pretended didactic pai-t of the exercises ; they could give no
intelligent account now of their own siidden excitement, and, in
fact, it is no more akin to any spiritual, rational, or sanctifying
cause, than the quiver of the nostrils of a horse at the sound of
the bugle and the fox-hounds. But they join the mourners, and
the manipulation proceeds. Of course, the sympathetic wave,
called religious, reaches them more and more. As I have shown,
it is the very nature of sympathy to assume the character of the
emotion with which we sympathize. Thus this purely natural
.and instinctive sensibility takes on the form of religious feeling^

SPURIOUS RELIGIOUS EXCITEMENTS. 467

Ijecause it is sympathy witli religious feeling in others. The
subject calls it by rehgious names — avv-akening, conyiction, re-
pentance— while in reality it is only related to them as a man's
shadow is to the living man. Meantime, the preachers talk to
them as though the feelings were certainly genuine and spiritual.
With this sympathetic current there may mingle sundry deep
original feelings about the soul, to which, we have seen, the
dead, carnal heart is fully competent by itself. These are fear,
remorse, shame, desire of applause, craving for future, selfish,
welfare, spiritual pride. Here we have the elements of every
spurious grace. The "sorrow of the world that worketh death'*
is mistaken for saving repentance. By a natural law of the feel-
ings, relaxation must follow high tension — the calm must suc-
ceed the storm. This quiet is confounded with "peace in
believing." The selfish prospect of security produces great
elation. This is supposed to be spiritual joy. When the soul
is removed from the sthnuU of the revival appliances, it of course
sinks into the most painful vacuity, on which supervene restless-
ness and doubt. So, most naturally, it craves to renew the illu-
sions, and has, for a time, a certain longing for and pleasui'e in
the scenes, the measures, and the agents of its pleasing intoxi-
cation. These are mistaken for love for God's house, worship
and people. Then the befooled soul goes on until it is betrayed
into an erroneous profession of religion, and a dead church
membership. He is now in the position in which the great
enemy of souls wordd most desire to have him, and where
his salvation is more difficult and improbable than anywhere
else.

The most fearful part of these transactions is the unscriptural
rashness of the professed guides of souls. They not only permit
and encourage these jDerilous confusions of thought, but pass
judgment on the exercises of their supposed converts with a haste
and confidence which angels would shudder to indulge. Here,
for instance, is a hurried, ignorant young person, no real jjains
having been taken to instruct his understanding in the nature
of sin and redemption, or to test his apprehension of gospel
truths. In his tempestuoiis excitement of fear and sympathy,
he is told that he is unquestionably under the influence of God's
Spirit. When he has been coaxed, or flattered, or wearied into

468 SPURIOUS EELIGIOUS EXCITEMENTS.

some random declaration that he thinks he loves his Saviour,
jojfnl proclamation is made that here is another sonl born to
God, and the brethren are called on to rejoice over him. But
no time has been allowed this supposed convert for self-exami-
nation ; no care to discriminate between spiritual and carnal
affections, or for the sul)sideiice of the froth of animal and sym-
pathetic excitements ; no delay is allowed to see the fruits of holy
living, the onlj' test which Christ allows as sufficient for other
than the omniscient judgment. Thus, over-zealous and heed-
less men, ignorant of the first principles of psychology, and
unconscious of the ruinous effects they may be producing, sport
with the very heart-strings of the spiritual life, and that in the
most critical moments. It were a less criminal madness for a
surgeon's raw apprentice to try experiments with his master's
keen bistoury on the patient's jugular vein.

These abuses are the less excusable in any minister, because
the Scriptures which he holds in his hands tell him j)lainly
enough without the lights of philosophy, the wrongness of all
these practices. No inspired apostle ever dared to pass a ver-
dict upon the genuineness of a case of religious excitement with
the rashness seen on these occasions. Christ has forewarned us
that converts can only be known correctly by their fruits. Paul
has sternly enjoined every workman upon the visible church,
•whose foundation is Christ, to "take heed how he buildeth
thereupon." He has told us that the materials placed by us
upon this structure may be genuine converts, as permanent as
gold, silver, and costly stones ; or worthless and pretended con-
verts, comparable to " wood, hay and stubble ;" that our work is
to be all tried by the fire of God's judgments, in which our per-
ishable additions mil be burned up; and if we are ourselves
saved, it will be as though we were saved by fire. The terrible
residts of self-deception and the deceitfulness of the heart are
dwelt upon, and men are urged to self-examination.

The idterior evils of these rash measures are immense. A
standard and tj^pe of religious experience are propagated by
them in America, as utterly unscriptural and false as those pre-
valent in Popish lands. So long as the subjects are susceptible
of the sympathetic passion, they are taught to consider them-
selves in a high and certain state of grace. All just and scrip-

SPURIOUS RELIGIOUS excite:^ients. 469

tnral marks of a gracious state are overlooked and even despised.
Is tlieir conduct immoral, tlieir temper bitter and unchristian,
their minds utterly dark as to distinctive gospel truths? This
makes no difference; thej are still excited and "happified" in
meetings ; thev sing and shout, and sway to and fro with reli-
gious feehngs. Thus these worthless, sj^mpathetic passions are
trusted in as the sure signatures of the Spirit's work.

Of the man who passes through this process of false conver-
sion, our Saviour's declaration is eminently true : " The last
state of that man is worse than the first." The cases are not
few which backslide early, and are again " converted," until the
process has been repeated several times. These men are usually
found most utterly hardened and profane, and hopelessly imper-
vious to divine truth. Their souls are utterly seared by spuri-
ous fires of feeling. The state of those who remain undeceived,
and in the communion of the church, is almost as hopeless.
"Having a name to live, they are dead." Their misconception
as to their own state is armor of proof against warning.

The results of these "revivals" are usually announced at once,
with overweening confidence, as works of God's Spirit. A minis-
ter reports to his church paper that he has just shared in a glo-
rious work at a given place, in which the Holy Ghost was pre-
sent -svith power, and "forty sovils were born into the kingdom."
Now, the man of common sense will remember how confidently
this same revivalist made similar reports last year, the year be-
fore, and perhaps many years previously. He was each time
equally confident that it was the Spirit's work. But this man
must know that in each previous case, time has ah'eady given
stubborn refutation to his verdict upon the work. Four-fifths
of those who, he was certain, were converted by God, hove al-
ready gone back to the world, and declare that they were never
converted at all. The means he has just used in his last revival
are precisely the same used in his previous ones. The false
fruits wore at first just the aspect which his last converts now
wear. Is it not altogether probable that they are really of the
same unstable character? But this minister declares positively
that these are God's works. Now, the cool, critical world looks
on and observes these hard facts. It asks. What sort of people
are these special guardians and expounders of Christianity ? Are

470 SPUKIOUS RELIGIOUS EXCITEMENTS.

they romantic fools, who cannot be taught by clear experience,
or are they conscious and intentional liars? The world is quite
charitable, and probably adopts the former solution. And this
solution, that the representatives of Christianity are men hope-
lessly and childishly overweening in their delusions, carries this
corollary for the most of worldly men avIio adopt it : That Chris-
tianity itself is an unhealthy fanaticism, since it makes its chosen
teachers such fanatics, unteachable by solid facts. Thus, the
Christian ministry, who ought to be a class venerable in the eyes
of men, are made contemptible. Civility restrains the expres-
sion of this estimate, but it none the less degrades the ministry
in the eyes of intelligent men of the world, as a class who are
excused from the charge of conscious imposture only on the
theory of their being incurably silly and fanatical.

In the denominations which most practice the so-called " re-
vival measures," abundance of facts obtrude themselves which
are conclusive enough to open the eyes of the blind and the ears
of the deaf. Instances may be found, where annual additions
have been reported, such that, if the sums were taken, and only
subjected to a fair deduction for deaths and removals, these
churches should number hundreds, or even a thousand members,
and should be in a splendid state of prosperity. But the same
church-reports still set these churches do"UTi as containing fifty
or seventy members. Others, which have been boasting these
magnificent processes, are moribund, and some have been "re-
vived" to death.

But the men who work this machinery, notwithstanding the
fatal condemnation of the facts, are not blind! What are the
causes of their jDerseverauce in methods so worthless? One
cause is, doubtless, an honest, but ignorant zeal. In the bustle
and heat of this zeal, they overlook the unpleasant facts, and
still go on, "supposing that they verily do God service." An-
other subtile and far-reaching cause is an erroneous, synergistic
theology. The man who believes in the efficient cooperation of
the sinner's "will with the divine will, in the initial quickening of
his soul, will, of course, seek to stimulate that human will to the
saving acts by all the same expedients by which men seek to
educe in their fellows carnal acts of will. Why not? Why
should not the evangelist practice to ei'oke that act cf will from

SPURIOUS RELIGIOUS EXCITEMENTS. 471

tlie man on wliicli lie belieA' es tlie sa\T[ng actiou of tlie Almiglity
pivots, by tlie same kind of arts tlie recruiting sergeant practices
— the martial song, tlie tlirilling fife and paljjitating drum, the
spectacular disj^laj of preyious recruits in their shining new
uniforms — until the young yeoman has "committed" himself by
taking the "queen's shilling"? That volition settles it that the
queen is to make him her soldier. It must be the youth's de-
cision, but, when once made for a moment, it decides his state.
Thus a synergistic theology fosters these "revival measures," as
they, in turn, incline towards a synergistic creed. Doubtless,
many ministers are unconsciously swayed by the natural love of
excitement. This is the same instinct which leads school-boys
and clowns to run to -^dtness a dog-fight, Spaniards to the cock-
fight and the bull-fight, sporting men to the pugilist's ring, and
theatre-goers to the comedy. This natural instinct prompts
many an evangelist, mthout his being distinctly aware of it, to
prefer the stirring scenes of the spurious revival to the sober,
quiet, laborious work of religious teaching. But it is obvious
that this motive is as unworth}^ as it is natural.

Another motive which prompts men to persevere in these
demonstrably futile methods is the desire to count large and
immediate results. To this they are spurred by inconsiderate,
but honest zeal, and by the partisan rivalries of their denomi-
nations. These unworthy motives they sanctify to themselves,
and thus conceal from their own consciences the real complexion
of them. No word is needed to show how unwise and unsuit-
able they are to the Christian minister. Here should be pointed
out the intrinsic weakness of the current system of employing
travelling revivalists in settled churches. No matter how ortho-
dox the man may be, the very nature of his task lays a certain
urgency and stress upon him, to show, somehow, immediate
results before the close of his meeting. If he does not, the very
ground of his vocation as a "revivalist" is gone. He has been
sent for to do this one thing, to gratify the hopes, zeal and pride
of the good people by, at least, a show of immediate fruits. If
he fails in this, he will not be sent for. This is too strong a
temptation for any mere mortal to endure without yielding. But
the prime fact which decides all true results of gospel means is,
that the Holy Ghost alone is the Agent of effectual calling ; and

472 SPUEIOUS RELIGIOUS EXCITEMENTS.

He is sovereign. His new-creating breath " blowetli wliere it
listeth." His command to tlie sower of the word may be ex-
pressed in Solomon's words : " In the morning sow thy seed;
• and in the evening hold not thy hand ; for thou knowest not
which shall prosper, whether this or that." The best minister
on earth may be appointed by God's secret purpose to the sad
mission given to Isaiah, to Jeremiah, and even to their Lord
during his earthly course, "to stretch forth their hands all the
day long to a disobedient and gainsaying people." Hence, this
evangelist has put himself under an almost fatal temptation to
resort to some illicit expedients which will produce, in appear-
ance, immediate results. How few, even of the orthodox, escape
that temptation !

An old and shrewd pi-actitioner of these human means of
religious excitements, was once asked by a man of the world,
"if it were possible he could be blind to the futility of most of
the pretended conversions ? " The answer was : " Of course not ;
we are not fools." "Why then," said the man, " do you employ
these measures?" The preacher answered: "Because a few
are truly converted, and make stable, useful Christians ; and the
rest when they find out the shallowness of their experiences, are
simply where they were before." The worldly-wise preacher's
statement involved two capital errors. It assumed that the "re-
vival measures " were the effective instruments of the conversion
of the genuine few ; and that withoiit these expedients they
would have remained out of Christ. This is utterly false. The
solid conversion of those souls took place not by cause of, but
in spite of, the human expedients. The work was the result of
sober Christian example, and previous didactic teaching in gos-
pel truths, and had there been no " revival measures " these
souls would have come out for Christ, perhaps a little later, but
more intelligently and decisively. The mistake as to the second
class, "the stony ground believers," is far more tragical. Tliey
are not left wJtere they v;ere l)efore ; " the last state of these men
is worse than the first." I will not repeat the explanation of the
depraving influences sure to be exerted upon the heart ; but I
wall add one still more disastrous result. These deceptive pro-
cesses usually end in making the s^ihjects infidels. Some who
keep their names on the communion rolls are secret infidels;

SPURIOUS RELIGIOUS EXCITEMENTS. 473

nearly all wlio withdraw tlieir names are open infidels, unless
tliej are too unthinking and ignorant to reflect and draw infer-
ences. First, ever}' young person who has a spark of self-respect
is mortified at being thrust into a false position, especially on so
high and solemn a subject. Pride is wounded. He feels that
he has been imposed on, and resents it. This wounded pride,
unwilHng to take the blame on itself, directs its anger against the
agents of the mortifying cheat. But to despise the representa-
tives of Christianity is practically very near to despising Chris-
tianity. The most earnest and clear-minded of these temporary
converts has now what appears to him, Avith a terrible plausibil-
ity, the experimental argument to prove that evangelical religion
is a deception. He says he knows he was honest and sincere in
the noA^el exercises to which he was subjected, and in a sense he
says truly. The religious teachers themselves assured him, in
the name of God, that they were genuine works of grace. Did
they not formally publish in the religious journals that it was
the Holy Spirit's work? If these appointed teachers do not
know, who can ? Yet now this backslider says himself, " I have
the stubborn proof of a long and sad experience, a prayerless
and godless life, that there never was any real spiritual change
in me." Who can be more earnest than he was? It is, then,
the logical conclusion, that all supposed cases of regeneration
are deceptive. "Many," he says, "have had the honesty like
myself to come out of the church candidly, shoulder the mor-
tification of their mistake, and avow the truth." Those who
remain "professors" are to be accounted for in two ways. The
larger part know in their hearts just as well as we do, that their
exercises were always a cheat, but they prefer to live a lie,
rather than make the humiliating avowal, and for these we feel
only contempt. The minority remain honestly self-deceived by
reason of impressible and enthusiastic temperaments. For
these, if they are social and moral, and do not cant, we can feel
most kindly, and respect their amiable delusion. It would be
unkind to distrust it. This reasoning having led them to dis-
credit entirely the work of the Holy Ghost, leads next to the
denial of his personality. The backslider sinks to the ranks of
a gross Socinian, or becomes a Deist or an Agnostic. Let the
history of our virtual infidels be examined and their early reli-

474 SPUEIOUS EELIGIOUS EXCITEMENTS.

gions life traced ; here will be found the source and cause of their
error. " Their name is Legion." He who inquires of the openly
ungodly adults of our land, will be astounded to find how large
a majority of them were once in the church. They conceal, as
well as they can, what they regard as the "disgraceful episode"
in their history. Their attitude is that of silent, but cold and
impregnable skepticism, based, as they think, on the argument
of actual experience. In fact, spurious revivals we honestly re-
gard as the chief bane of our Protestantism. We believe that
they are the chief cause, under the prime source, original sin,
which has deteriorated the average standard of holy living,
principles, and morality, and the church discipline of our reli-
gion, until it has nearly lost its practical power over the
public conscience. Striking the average of the whole nominal
membership of the Protestant churches, the outside world does
not credit us for anv higher standard than we are in the
habit of ascribing to the Synagogue, and to American Popery.
How far is the world wrong in its estimate ? That denom-
ination which shall sternly use its ecclesiastical authority,
under Christ's law, to inhibit these human methods and to
compel its teachers back to the scriptiu'al and only real means,
will earn the credit of being the defender of an endangered
gospel.

One corollary from this discussion is : How perilous is it to
entrust the care of souls to an ignorant zeal! None but an
educated ministry can be expected, humanly speaking, to resist
the seductions of the " re^dval measures," or to guard themselves
from the plausible blunders we have analyzed above. And the
church which entrusts the care of souls to lay-evangelists, self-
appointed and irresponsible to the ecclesiastical government
appointed by Christ, betrays its charge and duty.

No man is fit for the care of souls, except he is deeply imbued
with scriptural piety and grace. He must have a faith firm as a
rock, and humble as strong, with profound submission to the
divine will, which will calm him amidst all delays and all dis-
couragements that God will bless his own word in his own
chosen time. He must have that self-abnegation which will
make him willing to bear the evil repute of an unfruitful minis-
try, if the Lord so ordains, and unblenchingly refuse to resort

SPUEIOUS RELIGIOUS EXCITEMENTS. 475

io any unauthorized means to escape tliis cross. He must have
the moral courage to withstand that demand of ill-considered
zeal in his brethren, parallel to the ardor purus civiu^n juve-
nium in pohtics. He must have the unflagging diligence and
love for souls which will make him persevere in preaching the
gospel pubhcly, and from house to house, under the delay of
fruit. Nothing can give these except large measures of grace
and prayer.

FOAL CAUSE.^

OF the four " causes," or necessary conditions of every new
effect, taught by Aristotelians, the last was the "Final
Cause," TO T£?.o(;, or zo oh iuexa, "that for the sake of which"
this effect was produced. This result, for the sake of which the
effect has been produced, is termed "final," because it is of the
nature of a designed end ; and " cause," in that it has obviously
influenced the form or shape given to the result, and the selec-
tion of materials and physical causes employed. Final cause
thus always involves a judgment adapting means to an end, and
implies the agency of some rational agent.

2. The question. Do any of the structures of nature evince
final cause? is the same with the question. Is the " teleological
argument " valid to prove the being of a personal and rational
Creator ? The essence of that argument is to infer that,
wherever nature presents us with structures, and especially
organs adapted to natural ends, there has been contrivance, and
also choice of the physical means so adajoted. But contrivance
and choice are functions of thought and will, such as are per-
formed only by some rational person. And so, as material
nature is not intelligent or free, such adapted structures as man
did not produce must be the work of a supernatural jDerson.
This reasoning has satisfied every sound mind. Pagan and Chris-
tian, from Job to Newton. Yet it is now boldly assailed by
evolutionists.

3. Some attempt to borrow an objection which Descartes, very
inconsistently for him, suggested: That "he deems he cannot
without temerity attempt to investigate God's ends" {3fedita-
tions, iv. 20). "We ought not to arrogate to ourselves so much
as to suppose that we can be sharers of God's counsels" {Prm.
Phil. i. 28) . The argument is, that if there is an intelligent First
Cause, he must be of infinite intelligence ; whence it is presump-

' TMa paper was read before the Victoria Institute, London, Feb. 15, 1886.

476

FINAL CAUSE. 477

tuous in a finite mind to say that, in given effects, lie was
prompted by sucli or sucli designs. We are out of our deptli.
But the reply is, that this objection misstates the point of our
doctrine. We /do not presume to say, in advance of the practi-
cal disclosure of God's purposes in a given work, what they are,
or ought to be ; or that we know all of them exactly ; but only
that he is prompted in his constructions by some rational piir-
pose. And this is not presumptuous, but profoundly reveren-
tial ; for it is but concluding that God is too wise to have motive-
less volitions. Again, when we see certain structures obviously
adapted to certain functions, and regularly performing them, it
is not an arrogant, but a supremely reverential inference, that
those functions were among God's purposed ends in producing
those structures; for this is but concluding that the thing we
see him do is a thing he meant to do !

4. Next, we hear many quoting Lord Bacon against the study
of final causes. They would fain represent him as teaching
that the assertion of final causes is incompatible with, and ex-
clusive of, the establishment of efficient physical causes. But
as these latter are the real, proximate producers of all j:>7ie-
7iomena, it is by the study of them that men gain all their
mastery over nature, and make all true advances in science.
Whence, they argue, all study or assertion of final causes is
inimical to true science. Thus they quote Bacon, as, for in-
stance, in the JVovu^n OrgcuvuDX (lib. i. Apothegm, 48) : " Yet
the human intellect, not knowing where to pause, still seeks for
causes more known. Then, tending after the remoter, it recoils
from the nearer ; to- wit, to final causes, which are plainly rather
from the nature of man, than of the Universe; and from this
source they have corrupted philosophy in wondrous ways."

5. Now, Lord Bacon's own words prove that he does not con-
demn, but highly esteems the inquiry after final causes in its
proper place, the higher philosophy and natural theology. He
is himself a pronounced theist, and infers his confident belief
in God from the teleological argument. The whole extent of his
caution is, that when the matter in hand is physical, and the
problem is to discover the true, invariable, physical efficient of
ii class of phenomena, we confuse ourselves by mixing the ques-
tion of final cause. Thus, in the Advancement of Learning^ he

478 FINAL CAUSE.

himself divides true science into physical and metaphysical ; the
former teaching the physical efficients of efiects ; the latter, un-
der two divisions, teaching: 1. The Doctrine of Forms; 2. The
Doctrine of Final Causes. And this third, culminating in the-
ology, he deems the splendid apex of the pp-amid of human
knowledge.

6. In the second book of his work on the Advancement of
Learning he says : " The second part of metaphysics is the in-
quiry into final causes, which I am moved to report, not as
omitted, but as misplaced ;"— (he then gives instances of propo-
sitions about final causes improperly thrust into physical inqui-
ries;)— "not because those final causes are not true, and worthy
to be inquired, being kept within their own province ; but be-
cause these excursions into the limits of physical causes have
bred a vastness and solitude in that track. For otherwise, keep-
ing their precincts and borders, men are extremely deceived if
they think there is an enmity or repugnancy between them."

7. In fact, the two imply each other. If there is a God pur-
suing his purposed ends, or final causes, he will, of course, pur-
sue these through the efficient physical causes. It is the very-
adaptation of these to be the right means for bringing God's
ends, under the conditions established by his providence, which
discloses final causes. It is the physical cause, gravity, which
adapts the clock-weight to move the wheels and hands of the
clock. Shall we, therefore, say it is contradictory to ascribe to
the clock, as its final cause, the function of indicating time?
Does the fact that the physical cause — gravity — produces the
motions weaken the inference we draw from the complicated
adjustments, that this machine had an intelligent clockmaker?
No ; the strength of that inference is in this very fact, that here
the bhnd force of gravity is caused to realize an end so unlike
its usual physical eJBfects in the fall of hailstones and raindrops,
of leaves and decayed branches.

8. The evolutionist says, then, that since the physical cause
is efficient of the effect, this is enough to account for all actual
results, without assigning any "final cause." The lens, for in-
stance, has physical power to refract light. If Ave find a natural
leyis in a human eye, we have sufficient cause to account for the
formation of the spectrum, the function from which theists infer

FINAL CAUSE.

479

tlieir final cause ; and the logical mind Lias no need to resort to
a theory of "contrivance" and "final cause" for this organ.
Function is not the determining cause, but only the physical re-
sult of the existence of the organ. Birds did not get wings in
order to fly, but they simply fly because they have wings. As
to the complex structures called organs, the evolutionist thinks
his theory accounts for their existence, without any rational
agent pursuing purposed ends. That just this configuration of
a universe, with all its complicated structures, is physically pos-
sible (/. e. possible as the result of physical causes), is sufficiently
proved by the fact, that it exists as it is ; for theists themselves
admit that it is the physical causes which contain the efficient
causation of it. These are, as interpreted by evolutionists,
slight differentiations from the parent types, in natural repro-
ductions (variations which may be either slightly hurtful to the
progeny, slightly beneficial, or neutral), the plastic action of
environment in developing rudimental organs, and the survival
of the fittest. Allow, now, a time sufficiently vast for these
causes to have exhibited, countless numbers of times, all possi-
ble variations and developments ; under the rule of the survival
of the fittest, the actual configurations we see may have become
permanent, while all the agencies bringing them to pass acted
unintelligently and fortuitously.

9. Such, as members of this institute well know, is the latest
position of anti-theistic science, so-called. The whole plausi-
bility is involved in a confusion of the notions of fortuity and
causation. This we now proceed very simply to unravel. The
universal, necessary, and intuitive judgment, that every effect
must have an adequate cause, ensures every man's thinking that
each event in a series oi phenomena must have such a cause pre-
ceding it, however we may fail in detecting it. In this sense,
we cannot believe that any event is fortuitous. But the concur-
rence or coincidence of two such events, each in its place in its
own series caused, may be thought by us as uncaused, the one
event by the other or its series, and thus the concurrence, not
either event, may be thought as truly fortuitous. Thus, the
coincidence of a comet's nearest approach to our planet, with a
disastrous conflagration in a capital city, may be believed by us
to be, so far as the concurrence in time is concerned, entirely

480 rrxAL cause.

Toy cliance. AVe no longer believe that comets have anv power
to "shake war, pestilence or fire from their horrent hair" on oiu'
earth. Yet we have no doubt that a physical canse propels that
comet in its orbit every time it approaches the earth, or that
some adequate local cause "s\Tought that conflagration in the
metropolis. But, now, suppose this coincidence of the comet's
perigee and the conflagration should recur a number of times?
The reason would then see, in the frequency and regularity
of that recurrence, a new phenomenon, additional to the indi-
vidual ones of comet and fire; a new effect as much requiring
its own adequate cause, as each of these demands its physical
cause. This regular recurrence of the coincidence is now an
additional fact. It cannot be accounted for by fortuity. Its
regularity forbids that supposition. The physical cause of each
event, comet's approach and conflagi-ation, is adequate, each to
the production of its own effect. But the new effect to be ac-
counted for is the concurrence. This is regular; but we know
that the sure attribute of the results of blind chance or fortuity
is uncertainty, irregularity, confusion. The very first recm'rence
of such a coincidence begets a faint, jjrobable expectation of a
new connecting cause. All logicians agree that this probability
mounts up, as the instances of regular concurrence are multi-
plied, in a geometric ratio ; and when the instances become
numerous, the expectation of an additional coordinating cause
becomes the highest practical certainty. It becomes rationally
impossible to believe that these frequent and regular concur-
rences of the effects came from the bHnd, fortuitous coincidence
of the physical causes, acting each separately from the other.

10. The real case, then, is this : each physical cause, as such,
is only efficient of the immediate, blind result next to it. Grant
it the conditions, and it can do this one thing always, and al-
ways as bhndly as the first time. Gra"snty will cause the mass
thrown into the air to fall back to the earth, to fall anywhere,
or on anything, gravity neither knowing nor caring where. But
here are several batteries of cannon set in array to break down
an enemy's wall. "What we observe as fact is, that the guns
throw sohd shot convergently at every discharge, u2)on a sin-
gle fixed spot in the opposing cuitain, -^dth the evident design
to concentrate then* force and break down one chasm in that

FINAL CAUSE. 481

-wall. Now, it is a mere mockery to say that, given the cannon
and the balls, the explosive force of gunpowder, and gra^-ity,
the fall of these shots is accounted for. These physical causes
would account for their random fall, anywhere, uselessly, or as
probably upon the heads of the gunners' friends. The thing to
be accounted for is their regular convergence. This is an addi-
tional fact ; the blind physical causes do not and cannot account
for it ; it discloses design.

11. The human eye, for instance, is composed of atoms of
oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, with a few others of phos-
phorus and lime. Chemical affinity may arrange an ounce or
two of these atoms into a compound, which may be, so far as
any determination of that blind cause goes, of any shape, or
amorphous, fluid or solid, usefal, useless, or hurtful to sensitive
beings. But here are countless millions of reptiles, birds, quad-
rupeds, and men, creatures designed to live in the light and air,
of whom the men number twelve hundred millions at least, in
each individual of whom there is a pair of eyes, except in the
imperfect births. Numerous and exceedingly delicate adjust-
ments were necessary in each separate eye to effectuate the end
of an eye — vision. The pupil must open on the exterior front,
and not somewhere within the socket ; the interior of the ball
must be a camera obscura. There must be refracting, transpar-
ent bodies to bend the rays of light ; achromatic refraction must
be produced; focal distances must be adjusted aright; there
must be a sensitive sheet of nerve to receive the spectrum ; the
sensation of this image must be conveyed by the optic chords
to the sensor luTii ; the animal's perceptive faculty must be coor-
dinated as a cognitive power to this sensorial feeling ; the brow
and lids must be contrived to protect the wondrous organ.
Here, already, is a number of coincidences, and the failure of
one would prevent the end — vision. Let the probability that
the unintelligent cause, chemical affinity, would, in its blindness,
hit upon one of these requisites of a seeing eye, be expressed
by any fraction, we care not how large. Then, according to the
established law of logic, the probability that the same cause
will produce a coincidence of two requisites is found by multi-
plying together the two fractions representing the tM'O separate
probabilities. Thus, also, the joint concurrence of a third has

Vol. III.— 31.

482 FINAL CAUSE.

a probability expressed by the very small fraction produced by
multiplying together the three denominators. Before we have
done with the coordinations of a single eye, we thus have a pro-
bability, almost infinitely great, against its production by physi-
cal law alone. But in each head are two eyes, concurring in
single vision, which doubles the almost infinite improbability.
It is multiplied again by all the millions of the human and ani-
mal races. But this is not all. To say nothing of the coinci-
dence of means in inorganic and vegetable nature, there are in
animals many other organs besides eyes, which, if not as com-
plicated, yet exhibit their distinct coordinations. These must
multiply the improbability that fortuity produced all the former
results ! Thus the power of members and the capacity of hiiman
conception are exhausted before we approach the absurdity of
this theory of the production of ends in nature without final
cause.

12. We look, then, at these combinations of means to results
or functions, which unintelligent physical causes could not ac-
count for, and we perceive this further fact : Adjustments or co-
ordinations are regularly made, in order to certain ends. Tlie
nature of the end proposed has determined the nature of the
physical means selected, and the combination thereof. Thus,
as the ship is evidently designed and purposed for sailing, so is
the ear for hearing, and the eye for seeing. The function of
sailing has determined the materials and structure of the ship ;
the function of hearing, those of the ear; the function of seeing,
those of the eye. But the ship-building must be before the sail-
ing; the ear and eye must exist before the hearing and seeing.
The facts which we have, then, are these : Here are ends, com-
ing after their means, which yet have acted causatively on their
own precedent means! But every physical cause precedes its
own effect. No physical cause can act until it exists. Here^
however, are ends, Avhich exercise the influence of causes, and
yet, against all physical nature, are causes before they have ex-
istence, and act backwards up the stream of time ! Here is the
function of sailing, which has effectively caused a given struc-
ture in a ship-yard, before this function was.

13. To solve this paradox, there is onl}' one way possible for
the human mind. There must have been prescience of that fu-

FINAL CAUSE. 483

ture function. It is impossible that it can have acted causally,
as we see it act in fact, except as it is foreseen. But foresight
is cognition ; it is a function of intelligence ; it cannot be less.
A mind has been at work, preconceiving that function and the
things requisite to it, choosing the appropriate means, purpos-
ing the effective coordinations therefor, and thus shaping the
work of the physical causes. Tliis is "Jinal cmise.''

14. There is one sphere within which the mind has intuitive
and absolute knowledge of the working of final causes, as every
atheist admits. This is the sphere of one's own consciousness
and will. The man knows that he himself pursues final causes
when he conceives and elects future ends, selects means, and
adapts them to his own purposed results. But is he not equally
certain that his fellow-man also pursues final causes ? Doubt-
less. It is instructive to inquire how he comes to that certainty
as to his fellow's soul. He has no actual vision of that other's
subjective states. Men have no windows in their breasts into
which their neighbors peep, and actually see the machinery of
mind and will moving. But this man knows that his fellow is
pursuing final causes generically like those he consciously pur-
sues himself, because he observes the other's outward acts, and
infers final causes in the other's mind from the great mental
law of "like causes, like effects," by an induction guided by the
perfect visible analogy.

15. But when we observe, in nature, these visible actions ex-
actly analogous to combinations seen in our fellow-man when
he pursues his final causes, why do not the same analogy and
induction justify us in ascribing the same solution, — that there
are final causes in nature also? Why is not the one induction
as valid as the other? There is no difference. It is vain to
object, that whereas we see in our fellow a rational j)erson, we
see in nature no personality, but only sets of material bodies
and natural causations; for it is not true that we see in our
neighbor a rational person, competent to deal with final causes.
His soul is his personahty ! And this is no more directl}' visi-
ble to us than God is visible in nature. "\\^iat we see in our
neighbor is a series of bodily actions executed by members and
limbs as material as the physical organs of animals ; it is only
by an induction from a valid analogy between his acts and our

484 FINAL CAUSE.

own that we learn tlie rational personality behind his material
actions. The analogy is no weaker which shows ns God's per-
sonality behind the final causes of nature. The question re-
turns, VThy is it not as yalid ?

16. Is a different objection raised: That man's pursuit of his
final causes is personal and consciously extra-natural, exercised
by jDersonal faculties acting from "W'ithout iipon material nature,
while the powers which operate eyerythiug in nature are imma-
nent in nature? The replies are two: First, in the sense of
this discussion, human nature is not extra-natural, but is one of
the ordinary spheres of nature, and is connected with the lower
spheres by natural laws as regular as any. When the personal
will of a man pursues a final cause, he does it through means
purely natural ; there is, indeed, a supra-material power at work,
coordinating mind; but nothing extra-natural or supra-natural
appears. ^Tiy, then, may we not press an analogy so purely
natural through all the spheres of nature? Second, our oppo-
nents [Eyolutionists, or Materialists, or Agnostics] refute tliein-
selyes fatally, for they are the very men who insist on obliterat-
ing even that reasonable distinction which we make between
the material and mental spheres. They plead for ononism in
some form ; they deny that mind and matter are substantively
distinct; they insist on including them in one theory of sub-
stance and force. They have, then, utterly destroyed their own
premise by denying the very distinction between personal mind
and nature, on which alone their objection rests. On their
ground, our analogical induction for final cause in natiu'e is a
jjerfect proof. They admit that our minds consciously pursue
final causes. But mind and physical nature, say they, are mani-
festations of the same substance and force. Hence, when we
see the parallel coordinations of physical causes to futui'e ends
in nature, just like those we consciously employ, there is no
other inference possible but that nature, like us, pursues final
causes.

17. The exception of Hume and his followers of our genera-
tion is already virtually answered. He cavilled that the infer-
ence from our conscious employment of final causes to the same
fact in nature is unsound, because of the difference between a
person and a natural agency. Mr. Mill has echoed the cavil,

FINAL CAUSE. 485

while completely refuting it in another place. Mr. H. Spencer
has reproduced it in the charge that the inference labors under
the vice of anthroi^oviorjyJdsm ; that it leaps from the conscious
experience of our limited minds to an imaginary acting of an
infinite mind (if there is any divine mind), about which we can
certainly know nothing as to its laws of acting; and it unwai-
rantabl}' concludes that this absolute Being chooses and thinks
as we finite, dependent beings do. The argumentum ad homi-
neiii just stated Avould be a sufficient reply. Or we might urge
that, if God has made the human mind " after his image, in his
likeness," this would effectually guarantee all our legitimately
rational processes of thought against vice from antliropomorpli-
isrii ; for, in thinking according to the natural laws of our
minds, we would be thinking precisely as God bids us think.
And, should Mr. Spencer say that we must not "beg the ques-
tion" by assuming this theistic account of man's origin, we
might at least retort that neither should he beg the question by
denying it. We might also urge that the difference between the
normal acting of a finite mind and of an infinite one can only
be a difterence of degree, not of essence ; that the thinking of
the finite, when done according to its laws of thought, must be
good as far as it goes ; only, the divine thinking, while just like
it within the narrow limits, goes greatly farther. Sir Isaac New-
ton knew vastly more mathematics than the school-child ; yet,
when the school-child did its little "sum" in simple addition,
" according to rule," Newton would have pronounced it right ;
nor would he have done that "sum" in any other than the
child's method. Once more : the unreasonableness of the de-
mand that we sliall reject any conception of the divine working,
though reached by normal (human) inference, merely because
it may be anthropomorphic, appears thus. It Avould equally
forbid us to think or learn at all, either concerning God, or any
Being or concept different from man ; for, if we are not al-
lowed to think in the forms of thought natural and normal for
lis, we are forbidden to think at all. All man's cognition must
be anthropomorphic, or nothing.

18. But the complete answer to these exceptions is in the facts
already insisted on: that, in reasoning from "finality" in nature

' Theism., Part I , " Marks of Design in Nature. "

486 FINAL CAUSE.

to " intentiouality," we are but obeying an inevitable necessity;
we are not consulting any peculiarity of human laws of thought.
In the operations of nature, just as much as in our own consci-
ousness, we actually see ends which follow after their physical
efficients exerting a causal influence backward, before they
come into existence, on the collocations of their own physical
means, which precede. There is no way possible in physical
nature by which a cause can act before it is. The law of phy-
sical causation is absolute ; a cause must have existed in order to
operate. Hence we are driven out of physical nature to find
the explanation of this thing, — driven, not by some merely hu-
man law of thought, but by an absolute necessity of thought.
The final cause which acted before it existed must have preexist-
ed in forethought. Forethought is a function of mind. There-
fore, there must be a Mind behind nature, older and greater
than all the contrivances of nature. A great amount of think-
ino- has been done in the finalities of nature. VTho did that
thinking? Not nature. Then God. The only alternative hy-
pothesis is that of chance. "We have seen that hypothesis fall
into utter ruin and disgrace before the facts.

19. "Were all the claims of the evolutionist granted, this would
not extinguish the teleological argument, but only remove its
data back in time, and simplify them in number. For then the
facts we should have would be these : a few, or possibly one
primordial form of animated matter, slowly, but regularly-, pro-
ducing all the orderly wonders of life, up to man, through the
sure action of the simple laws of slight variation, influence of
environment, survival of the fittest. Here, again, are wonderful
adaptations to ends. And chance would equally be excluded
by the numbers, the regularity, the beneficence of the immense
results. The problem would recur : Who adjusted those few,
but ancient, elements so as to evolve all this ? Teleology is as
api3arent as ever. We may even lu-ge that the distance, the
multitude, the complex regularity of the later efiects which we
now witness, illustrate the greatness of the thinking but the
more. The justice of this point may appear fi'om the fact that
there are theistic evolutionists who make the very claim just
urged. They advance the evolutionist theory, and in the same
breath they stoutly assert that in doing so they have not weak-

FINAI. CAUSE. 487

ened, but improved, the grounds of the teleological argument.
However we may judge their concession of this improved the-
ory of evolution to be unwise and weak, this other assertion is
solid, that they are no whit inferior in knowledge or logic to
their atheistic comrades and co-laborers, who pronounce the
teleological argument dead.

20. The attempt to account for structures adapted to func-
tions by evolution has no pretence even of applying, except
in organized beings which perpetually reproduce their kinds;
for it is the claim of slight variations in generation, and of the
fuller development of nascent new organs by the reaction of en-
vironment, which form the "working parts" of the theory. But
clear instances of finality are not confined to these vegetable
and living beings. There are wondrous adaptations in the
chemical facts of inorganic nature, in the mechanism of the
heavenly bodies, in the facts of meteorology. Here, then, their
speculation breaks down hopelessly. Have suns and stars, for
instance, attained to their present exquisite adjustments of re-
lation and perfection of being by the blind experiments of count-
less reproductions? Then the fossil suns, unfitted to survive,
ought to lie about us as thick as fossil polypi and moUusks!

21. The claim that a blind conatus towards higher action, felt
in the animal, may have assisted the plastic influence of environ-
ment from without in developing rudimental organs, cannot as-
sist the evolutionists. They differ among themselves as to the
mode of such influence ; they contradict each other. Natural
history fatally discredits the claim by saying that the organ
must bo possessed by the species of animals before any of them
could feel any conatus towards its use. Can seeing be before
eyes, even in conception? No. How, then, could eyeless ani-
mals feel any conatus to see ? Let no one be deluded by the
statement that a blind boy among us may feel a yearning to see.
He is a defective exception in a seeing species, who do crave to
see because they already have eyes, and who suggest to their
blind fellow the share in this desire by the other faculty of
speech. It still remains true that the species must have eyes
beforehand, in order that individuals may experience a conatus
for seeing. But the case to be accounted for would be the be-
ginning of such conatus in some individual of a species, none of

488 ■ FINAL CAUSE.

wliich had the organ for the function, and in which, conse-
quently, none had even the idea of the function or its pleasures
as the objective of such desire. If they resort to the assertion
that this conatus towards a function may be instinctive and un-
intelligent, the fatal answers are : that their own sciences of
zoology and physiology assure us that instincts are not found
in cases where the organs for their exercise do not exist ; and
that an instinctive conatus, being blind and fortuitous, would
never produce results of such regularity and completeness, and
those exactly alike in each of the multitvides of a species.

22. But the most utter collapse of the attempt to exjjlain the
finalities of nature by the laws of a supposed evolution occurs
when we approach those classes of organs which complete their
development while the influences of environment and function
are entirely excluded; and these are exceedingly numerous.
The fowl in the shell has already developed wings to fly with,
in a marble case which excluded every atom of air, the rnedmvi
for flying. So this animal has perfected a j)air of lungs for
breathing, where there has never been any air to inhale. It has
matured a perfect pair of eyes to see with, in a prison where
there has never entered a ray of light. It has an ajyj^arritus of
nutrition in complete working order, including the interadjust-
ments of beak, tongue, swallow, craw, gizzard, digestive stomach,
and intestine, although hitherto its only nutrition has been
from the egg which enclosed it, and this has been introduced
into its circulation in a difierent manner. This instance of the
fowl has been stated in detail, that it may suggest to the hearer
a multitude of like ones. The argument is, that physical causes
can only act when in juxtaposition, both as to time and place,
wdth the bodies which receive their efficiency. But here envi-
ronment and function were wholly absent until the results —
wings, eyes, ears, lungs, alimentary canal, — were completed.
Therefore they had no causal connection whatever as physical
causes. Their influence could only have been as final causes.

23. Perhaps the deepest mysteries and wonders of nature are
those jDresented in the functions of reproduction. And to these
nature attaches her greatest importance, as she shows by many
signs, seeing the very existence of the genera and sj)ecies depends
on this. The organs of reproduction present instances most

FINAL CAUSE. 489

fatal to our opponents in all those cases where the male organs
are in one individual, and the female in a different one of the
same species, and where their development is complete before
they either can or do react upon each other in any manner.
These instances not only include the great majority of the ani-
mal species, but many kinds of plants and trees, or, at least,
different flowers of the same tree. The organs are exceedingly
unlike each other, yet exactly adapted for future cooperation.
This fitness is constituted not only by structure of masses, but
by the most refined and minute molecular arrangements. If
either of these delicate provisions is out of place, nature's end
is disappointed. Must not these organs be constructed for each
other? Yet the reaction of environment had no influence on
their development, for all interaction has been excluded until
the maturity of the structures. Final cause is here too clear to
admit of doubt when the cases are duly considered.

24. The argument will close with these general assertions.
Our conclusion has in its favor the decided assent of the com-
mon sense of nearly all mankind, and of nearly all schools of
philosophy. All common men of good sense have believed they
saw, in the adjustments of the parts of nature to intended func-
tions, final causes and the presence of a supernatural mind. The
only exceptions have been savages like the African Bushmen,,
so degraded as to have attained to few processes of inferential
thought on any subject. All speculative philosophers have been
fully convinced of the same conclusion, from Job to Hamilton
and Janet, except those who have displayed eccentricity in their
philosophy, either by materialism, ultra-idealism, or pantheism.
This consensus of both the unlearned and the learned will weigh
much with the healthy and modest reason.

25. The postulate that each organ is designed for an appro-
priate function is the very pole-star of all inductive reasoning
and experiment in the study of organized nature. At least, every
naturalist proceeds on this maxim as his general principle ; and
if he meets instances which do not seem to conform to it, he at
once discounts them as lusns 7iaturce, or reserves them for closer
inquiry. When the botanist, the zoologist, the student of human
physiology, detects a new organ, not described before in his sci-
ence, he at once assumes that it has a function. To the ascer-

490 FINAL CAUSE.

tainment of this function lie now directs all liis observations and
experiments ; until he demonstrates what it is, he feels that the
novelty he has discovered is unexplained ; when he has ascer-
tained the function, he deems that he has reduced the new dis-
covery into its scientific place. Without the guidance of this
postulate of adapted function for each organ, science would be
paralyzed, audits order would become anarchy. The instances
are so illustrious, from Harvey's inference by the valvular mem-
branes in the arteries to a circulation of the blood, down to the
last researches of zoology and botany, that citation is needless
for the learned. But this postulate is precisely the doctrine of
final cause.

26. Belief in final cause is the essential counterpart to, and
immediate inference from, the belief in causation. But this is
the very foundation of inductive logic. There is no physicist
who does not concur with us in saying that all induction from
instances observed to laws of nature is grounded in the " uni-
formity of nature." But has this nature any stable uniformity?
Is not her attribute variation and fickleness? The first aspect
of her realm is mutation, boundless mutation. Or, if she is
found to have, in another aspect, that stability of causation
necessary to found all induction, how comes she, amidst her
miitabihties, to have this uniformity? Her own attributes are
endless change, and hlhidness. Her forces are absolutely unin-
telligent and uuremembering. No one of them is able to know
for itself whether it is conforming to anj- previous uniformity
or not ; no one is competent to remember any rule to which it
ought to conform. Plainly, then, were material nature left to
the control of physical laws alone, she must exhibit either a
chaotic anarchy, or the rigidity of a mechanical fate. Either
condition, if dominant in nature, would equally unfit her to be
the home of rational free agents and the subject of inductive
science. Let the hearer think and see. Nature is uniform,
neither chaotic nor fatahstic, becaiise she is directed by a Mind,
because intelligence directs her unintelligent j^hysical causes to
preconceived, rational piirposes. Her uniformities are but the
expressions of these purj^oses, which are stable, because they
are the volitions of an infinite, immutable Mind, "whose pur-
poses shall stand, and who doeth all his good pleasure," because

FINAL CAUSE. 491

all his volitions are guided from the first b}' absolute knowledge
and wisdom, perfect rectitude, and full benevolence. Nature is
stable, only because the counsels of the God who uses her for
his ends are stable.

None but theists can consistently use induction.

The Chaikman (D. Howard, Esq., Vice-President of Chemical Society). — We
have, in the first place, to thank the author of this paper, whom we would gladly
have welcomed among us, had he been able to leave bis distant home. Having
been, a quarter of a century ago, a very distinguished soldier, he has since added
to that distinction the further claim upon our recognition which belongs to his
position as a professor and deep thinker. It may seem strange that after all these
years of discussion we should still have to go back to so elementary a matter as the
causes which Aristotle classed as first causes. And yet there are few things which
create so much discussion as the question of first cause. I once heard a distin-
guished lawyer ask a distinguished physician, in cross-examination, what was the
caiise of a man's illness, and the physician answered : "If you will tell me what
you mean by 'cause,' I will answer the question." The lawyer, however, thought
better of it, and the question was not answered; and we were conseqiiently cheated
out of a very important discussion. Doubtless, the barrister was astute enough to
know that most men would have fallen into the trap he had laid, and, in describ-
ing the cause of the man's illness, have afforded a chance for a clever rejoinder.
And so it is in the matter before us. We see men entirely ignoring the very an-
cient distinction between the different causes by confusing, under the common
term "causes," all those which Aristotle, if not the first to draw attention to, was
undoubtedly the first to classify. The more we pursue the question, the more evi-
dent it is that, take what view we may of creation, whether we consider the present
state of things to have been brought about by evolution, or by a mere single act of
creation, we are just as much unable to escape from the argument of final cause
in the one case as in the other. We are, in fact, imable to free our minds from
the belief that there has been a distinct purpose in nature. It is, I believe, per-
f ectlj' true that there is nothing in the belief in evolution to jirevent a full and
complete belief in a final power and creative cause, though I qiiite share the au-
thor's view of the very incomplete proof of the universality of evolution. There-
fore, this question of final cause is by no means one which it is needless to discuss
in these days. It is not one, I think, which has been so thoroughly thrashed out
that there is no necessity to say any more upon it. There are, however, many
here who, I believe, are well able to discuss the subject, and I hope they will give
us the benefit of their thoughts upon it.

Me. Hastings C. Dent, C. E., F. L. S. — In offering a few remarks on this sub-
ject, I would first of all say that there have been few papers read in this room to
which I have listened vnth deeper interest ; and I cannot but regard it as a most
important contribution to the transactions of this Society I propose to confine
my remarks to a few criticisms, and I may say that there are many points in the
paper which are so very clear and plain that I might almost call them axioms. I
will draw attention to some half dozen of these, and the first to which I would
refer relates to contrivance and choice. In section 2, the author says : ' ' "WTierever
nature presents us with structures, and especially organs, adapted to natural ends,
there has been contrivance, and also choice of the physical means so adapted. I>i:t

492 FINAL CAUSE.

contrivance and choice are functions of thought and will, such as are performed
only by some rational persons. " There is a very admirable illustration of this given
in section 7. It is not the old idea of Paley about the watch, but rather an enlarge-
ment of that idea. The author says, ' ' Here the blind force of gravity is caused
to realize an end so unlike its usual physical effects in the fall of hail-stones and
rain-drops, of leaves and decayed branches." Then I come to axiom No. 2, which
is to be found in section 8. The author says, "Function is not the determining
cause, but only the physical resiilt of the existence of the organ. Birds did not
get •nings in order to tly ; 'but they simply fly beca^^se they have wings. " In the
same way, we are told in paragraph 12, "Adjustments, or coordinations, are regu-
larly made in order to certain ends;" and again, on the same page, "As the ship
is evidently designed and purposed for sailing, so is the ear for hearing and the eye
for seeing." Axiom No. 3 is given in section 9, where the author saj's, "We know
that the sure attribute of the results of blind chance or fortuity is uncertainty,
irregularity, confusion ; " and then we have axiom No. 4, a little further down, ' ' It
becomes rationally impossible to believe that these frequent and regular concur-
rences of the effects came from the blind, fortuitous coincidence of the physical
causes, acting each separately from the other. " Again, in the concluding part of
section 17, we are told, "The difference between the normal acting of a finite
mind and an infinite one can only be a difference of degree, not of essence;" and
then we have an analogy between the child's sums and those of Sir Isaac Newton.
The fifth axiom is to be found at the end of paragraph 20, where the aiithor con-
futes the theory of gradual evolution, or the doctrine of organisms obtaining per-
fection. Here the author gives us a splendid specimen of analytical reasoning, by
citing the case of the sun and the stars, as to which he says, "Have suns and stars,
for instance, attained to their present exquisite adjustments of relation and perfec-
tion of being, by the blind experiments of countless reproduction ? Then, the
fossil suns, unfitted to survive, ought to lie about lis as thick as fossil polypi and
mollusks. " There is one more axiom. It appears at the end of section 21:
' ' Their own sciences of zoology and physiology assure us that instincts are not
found in cases where the organs for their exercise do not exist ." May I be allowed,
very humbly, to take exception to one item in section 22 ? I would venture to
suggest that the argument there employed is weak, because it can be so easily con-
troverted or answered by the evolutionists. The author says, "The most utter
collapse of the attempts to explain the finaUties of nature by the laws of a sup-
posed evolution occurs when we approach those classes of organs which comi^lete
their development while the influences of environment and function are entirely
excluded, and these are exceedingly numerous. " He then refers to the fowl in
the egg, as obtaining all its different organs necessary for the consumption of food,
and the other needs of its being. Now, the evolutionist would say the fowl has
merely inherited organs which arc transmitted in the egg, and that, consequently,
improvement or degeneration takes place after the animal has emerged from the
egg-shell ; every creature becoming more complex as the embryonic stage becomes
more complicated. I do not know any creature that emerges from an egg without
IDOssessing some organs which it could not use while in the egg.

Rev. J. White, M. A. — May I take the liberty of offering a few remarks ? I
think that, even if we admit all the evolutionists lay claim to, nevertheless, the
teleological argument — that of a final cause for the existence of a rational and in-
teUigent Creator— still remains unanswered. Evolution only accounts for the
existence of the universe as a going machine, successive generations and variations

FINAL CAUSE. 493

being coutiuually produced, and those generations being perpetuated in a manner
beneficial to the creatures generated. I say, admitting all this as an explanation
of the natural history of the universe, it still fails to exclude the teleological argu-
jnent that the creatures which exist must have had the power of variation bestowed
upon them. The creature is put into an environment which enables it to fulfil its
functions and to bring about the results we witness; but all this implies design and
purpose. It is what could not have occurred by chance or accident. Therefore, I
think material evolution does not militate against the belief we entertain, and that
it is rational to entertain, as to the universe having been created by a God who
had in view the perfection of the creatures by which it is inhabited. Evolution is
to be regarded simply as one of the means by which this perfection and improve-
ment have been brought about. In point of fact, the whole argument brought by
the evolutionists against theism seems to me very like the old illustration which,
in accounting for the movement of a watch, went back to the spring and left the
origin of that part of the machinery unexplained. These scientific theorists
attempt to ex^slain the existence of the universe without a Creator. They merely
explain some of the processes, but fail altogether to touch their origin. It is a
very remarkable thing how completely all the efforts of human science have failed
to explain the origin of anj'thing. Professor Max Mtlller has pointed out that all
the attempts to explain the beginning of any language have utterly failed, and that
there is not the slightest prospect of our obtaining such knowledge. He adds the
remark, that the human intellect seems equally to fail in ascertaining the begin-
ning of everything else. Therefore, I cannot think that the argument for evolu-
tion— although I admit evolution to be true as far as it accounts for a considerable
xiumber of steps in the process by which the creatures of the universe have been
improved — does dispose of the teleological argument for a final cause, which the
author of this paper has put before us in so admirable a manner.

Mr. Dent. — I should like to ask the last speaker whether he accounts for the
appearance of man by evolution ?

Rev. J. White. — My argument was only that, admitting evolution to be entirely
proved, and that it could be shown that man was descended from an ape or a tad-
^Dole, still this does not do away with the teleological argument that there is design
in nature, and that generation is only a means by which it is worked out.

Mr. Dent. — Does that not go against the statement of Genesis ?

Eev. J. "White. — I only say, supposing the case of the evolutionist to be ad-
mitted, still it does not militate against, nor upset, the argument advanced in the
paper. This was what I intended to express.

Capt. Fkancis Peteie (Hon. Sec). — I have received the following communica-
tion from Surgeon-General C. A. Gordon, M. D., C. B., who is unavoidably pre-
vented from being present:

^''Physical causes are the real proximate producers of all plienomena, Sec. 4.

" But the fact that they are so leaves the ultimate cause of those phenomena un-
explained. For example, a match applied to gunpowder is the immediate cause of
an explosion. But the ^chv of this result is not explained by the occurrence of the
explosion.

' ' In physiology we know that each organ in the body performs its o^vn definite
function, and none other; also, that the several functions of organs are influenced
by immaterial causes, as the emotions, etc. The fact we know; the why remains
jnysterious and unknown.

"And so with particular causes of disease, and action of drugs employed in treat-

494 FIXAl, CAUSE.

ment. The fact that definite effects follow the causes and the drugs is matter of
experience. The why, — that is, the ultimate cause,— in the one case as in the other,
is unrevealed.

^* Materialists assert tJiat the pJienomcna of mind differ rather in derjrce than in
Idndfrom tlie 'phenomena of matter.

"As a matter of fact, fxs little is known of the ultimate and occult properties of
matter as there is known of the corresponding properties and faculties of mind.
As expressed by Baxter : 'Men who believe that dead matter can produce the
effects of life and reason are a hundred times more credulous than the most
thorough-paced believer that ever existed.' "

The Chaieiian. — I wish the author had been here to have answered the friendly
criticisms that have been made ui^on his pajjer. llie point ilr. Dent has called our
attention to in regard to the answer of the evolutionist as to the formation and
growth of the fowl in the egg, points to one of those curious things that have
always passed my comprehension. It is assumed, undoubtedly, for a very good
reason, as we see that such is the case in nature, that the influence of heredity is
an immense power; but what right have we, from the theorj' of jDure natural selec-
tion, to assume anything of the kind ? "What right have we to assume that extra-
ordinary persistency of type which is one of the most remarkable characteristics of
all animals? Granting, for the sake of argument, that the peculiar transforma-
tions undergone by the embrj'o are a proof of the past history of the race, how can.
we, from the characteristics before us, form a conclusion as to the cause of this ?
But there is, of course, the other possible explanation, that those singular points
which are appealed to as evidences of past history, are evidences, not of past his-
tory, but of the i^resent position of the animal in the scheme of creation. This is
as much in favor of the teleological point of view as it is in favor of the evolutionist.
We have to thank the author for a most interesting .paper.

Me. D. MLaekn. — In section 20 of the paper, the author speaks of the "won-
drous adaptation in the chemical facts of inorganic nature in the mechanism of the
heavenly bodies, in the facts of meteorology, " the slightest derangement of which
would be fatal to the whole of the existmg animal creation. Have the evolution-
ists attempted to notice or explain the adjustment of the masses, and forces, and
distances of the heavenly bodies, as bearing on the argument in favor of tel-
eology ?

The Chaiemax. — As far as my reading goes, there is absolutely no modern argu-
ment in that direction. Undoubtedly, a few centuries back the alchemists gave
us a most interesting history of the evolution of matter, and Paracelsus gave us
certain speculations which are not looked upon with respect by modern scientists.

lis. Wise. — We find in the amceba that which corresponds to digestion, repro-
duction, and many of the functions of highly organized creatures like ourselves.
I have been reading the introductory chapter to Foster's Pliysiology, and he there
very beautifully shows that function precedes organization, while a great German
physiologist says that organs are simply the localization of functions. I should like
to know whether that is true or not ?

The CHAiEiiAX. — I wish some able physiologist were here to answer that ques-
tion. For my part I think there is a good deal more of organization in the amoeba
than the microscope will show. The differentiation of protoplasm is not to be
measured by our powers of perception.

Mb. Wise. — It is said that they are jellies, which are jjurely transparent. Can
we in that case discern anything corresponding to organization ?

FINAL CAUSE. 495

The Chairman. — If an apparently perfectlj' structureless piece of jelly performs
functions, is not that a proof of organization ?
The meeting was then adjourned.

EEMAEKS OX THE FOREGOING PAPER, BY THE REV. R. COLLINS, M. A.

I am miich indebted to the honorary secretary for sending me a proof of Dr.
Dabney's paper. It seems to me to be the most liacid and closely reasoned essay
upon the subject that I have read.

It is instructive to observe how diffictdt it is for the evolutionists, though they
discard the doctrine of final causes, to escape its practical dominancy over their rea-
sonings and methods. In their search after modifications in the structure and
functions of plants and animals, they are guided, equally with Harvey, by the idea
of some object to be accomplished. The evolutionist writes as though Nature were
always working up to quasi-final causes, though his theory is that no such direct
cause exists, there being no intelligence to plan such intention. Nature accom-
pUshes what would be accomplished by an intelUgence having an intention in view,
and on the same lines, only by a different method, namely, that wherever Nature
by any adventitious accidental change hits upon that which will give a plant or
animal a better chance in the struggle for existence, that better chance, to be fol-
lowed by an infinite number of better chances (though why so followed we are not-
clearly told), establishes a new dj-nasty. The result in the new dynasty is such as
would be obtained by intelligent design. Thus the language of design is contin-
ually used. For instance (to take up the first evolution article that comes to hand,
Mr. Grant Allen's Dispersion of Seeds, in Knoicledgc, November, 1885), we read,
"This very sedentary nature of the plant kind renders necessary aU sorts of curious
devices and plans, on the jjart of parents, to secure the proper start in life for their
young seedlings. Or rather, to put it with stricter biological correctness, it gives
an extra chance in the struggle for existence to all those accidental variations which
happen to tell at all in the direction of better and more perfect dispersion. " Now
here the first intuition of the mind is towards "devices and plans," which then is
immediately corrected by the superior ' ' accident " theory. If ' ' accidental variations,
which Jiappen to tell " in the direction of more perfect establishment, reaUy produce
what would be prodiiced by a wise design, why should we refuse to beUeve the de-
sign, and choose the incomparably more difficult theory that "accidental variations"
alone, "that happen to tell," have accomphshed precisely what design would
accomphsh? What scientific advantage has the "accidental variations" theory
over the final cause, which is, after all, practically admitted? How design has
worked is another matter. Its method may be a perfectly legitimate subject of in-
quiry. It may have worked, perhaps, in part by variations in plants and animals.
But when I speak of variations as "accidental," what do I realh* mean by "acci-
dental? " Have I any proof that what seems to me to be accidental is not the re-
sult of some law or some intention ? Professor Huxley seems to im^jly such a law
or laws, and to deny anj-thing actually accidental, when he says, "The whole world,
living and not living, is the result of the mutual interaction, according to definite
laws, of the forces possessed by the molecules of which the primitive nebulosity of
the universe was composed." "If this be true," he goes on to say, "it is no less
certain that the existing world lay, jDotentially, in the cosmic vapor, and that a
sufficient intelligence could, from a knowledge of the properties of the molecules of

496 FINAL CAUSE.

that vapor, have predicted, say the fauna of Britain in 1869, with as much cer-
tainty as one can say what will happen to the vapor of the breath on a cold win-
ter's day. " These laws, then, govern what the evolutionists elsewhere call ' ' acci-
dents." Whether Mr. Herbert Spencer's " energy " woiald eliminate "accident,"
strictly speaking, from the universe, or not, I cannot tell. But if so, it explodes
the whole of Mr. Darwin's theory, based on the ' ' survival of the fittest, " at least,
as it is used by the evolutionists. The only value of Mr. Spencer's ' ' energy, "
however, to many of us, is to cover an infinity of nebulous thought ; for the idea
conveyed by the word is simply "power for work," wherever found. And it is
diflicult to see what we can really establish upon the endeavor to unify in speech
or theory the jjower for work of some kind or other that exists all over the ujiiverse.
But if there be one such ' ' energj^ "' behind its manifold ramifications, and if it be
working out such harmonies and adaptations in nature as would be worked out in
obedience to final causes existing in some intelligent intention, is that ' ' energy "
blindly-inteUigent or gz^o^Z-intelligent ? or how am I to understand it ? Does it
only prompt ' ' accidental variations " ? or does it work on definite lines ? If the
latter, where is the "accident "? And if the energy develops final causes, how are
we to eliminate from it the attribute of Mind ?

Surely in eliminating the doctrine of final causes from the universe, the evolu-
tionists destroy the only real guide we can take for unravelling, so far as we can
unravel, the functions of nature. Moreover, they thus deny that which they them-
selves practically follow throughout their investigations.

"Accident" 7-ersiis "certainty, ' as a guide to the explanation of the harmonies
and adaptations of the universe, seems to be the greatest philosophical paradox
conceivable.

MTI-BIBLICAl THEOEES OF EIGHTS.^

WHEN tlie friends of the Bible wdn a yictory over one
phase of infidehty, they naturally hope that there will
be a truce in the warfare and they may enjoy peace. But the
liope is ill-founded. We should haye foreseen this, had we
considered that the real source of infidelity is always in the
pride, self-^dll and ungodliness of man's nature. So that, when
men are defeated on one line of attack, a part of them at least
will be certainly prompted by their natural enmity to God's Word
to hunt for some other weapon against it. Rational deism, from
Bolingbroke to Hume, received a Waterloo defeat at the hands
of Bishop Butler and the other Christian apologists, and well-
informed enemies surrendered it. But neology raised its head,
and for two generations opened a way for virtual infidels.
History and biblical criticism in the hands of the Bengels,
Delitzschs, Leuthards, have blocked that way, and Tubingen is
silent, or at least discredited. Then came the anti-Mosaic geo-
logy and evolution — the one attacking the recent origin of man,
the flood, etc., the other presuming to construct a creation with-
out a creator. These two are now passing into the " sere and
yellow leaf." More correct natural science now points with
certainty to a deluge, to the recency of the last glacial epoch, the
newness of the present face of the continents, and consequently
to the late appearance of man upon the earth. Agassiz, M.
Paul Janet and Sir William Dawson reinstate the doctrines of
final cause and fixed genera of organic life upon their impreg-
nable basis.

But we may expect no respite in the warfare. Another hostile
banner is already unfurled, and has gathered its millions of un-
believers for a new attack upon God's Holy Word. This assault
proceeds from the side of professed social science. It appears

' This article appeared in the Presbyterian Quarterly for July, 1888.
Vol. Ill 32. 497

498 ANTI-BIBLICAL THEORIES OF RIGHTS.

in those dogmas of social rights which are historically known as
the Jacobinical, and which have been transferred from the athe-"
istic French radicals to the free Protestant countries. The
object of the Scriptures is to teach the way of redemption and
sanctification for sinful man; yet incidentally they teach, by
precept and implication, those equitable principles on which all
constitutional goyernments are founded. So far as God gaye to
the chosen people a political form, the one which he preferred
w^as a confederation of little republican bodies represented by
their elderships. (Ex. XAdii. 25, 26 ; Ex. iii. 10 ; Xinn. xi. 16,
17 ; Num. xxxii. 20-27.)

When he conceded to them, as it were under protest, a regal
form, it was a constitutional and electiye monarchy. (1 Sam.
X. 24, 25.) The rights of each tribe were secured against yital
infringement of this constitution by its own yeto power. They
retained the prerogative of protecting themselves against the
usurpations of the elective king by withdrawing at their ovra
sovereign discretion from the confederation. (1 Kings, xii.
13-16.)

The history of the secession of the ten tribes under Jeroboam
is often misunderstood through gross carelessness. No divine
disapprobation is anywhere expressed against the ten tribes for
exercising their right of withdrawal from the perverted federa-
tion. "When Eehoboam began a war of coercion he was sternly
forbidden by God to pursue it. (1 Kings, xii. 2-4.)

The act by which "Jeroboam made Israel to sin against the
Lord" was wholly another and subsequent one — his meddling
with the di^anely appointed constitution of the church to pro-
mote merely poUtical ends. (1 Kings, xii. 26-28.)

Thus, while the Bible history does not prohibit stronger forms
of government as sins per se, it indicates God's preference for
the representative republic as distinguished from the levelling
democracy ; and to this theory of human rights all its moral
teachings correspond. On the one hand, it constitutes civil so-
ciety of superiors, inferiors and equals (see Shorter Catechism,
Question 64), making the household represented by the parent
and master the integral unit of the social fabric, assigning to
each order, higher or lower, its rule or subordination under the
distributive equity of the law. On the other hand, it protected

ANTI-BIBLICAL THEORIES OF RIGHTS. 4Q9

each order in its legal privileges, and prohibited oppression and
injustice as to all.

In a word, the maxim of the scriptural social ethics may be justly
expressed in the great words of the British Constitiition, "Peer
and peasant are equal before the law," which were the guide of a
Pym, a Hampden, a Sydney, a Locke, a Chatham, and equally of
Hancock, Adams, Washington, Mason and Henry. Their theory
assigned to the different classes of human beings in the common-
Avealth different grades of privilege and of function, according
to their different natures and qualifications ; but it held that the
inferior is shielded in his right to his smaller franchise, by the
same relation to the common heavenly Father, by the same
Golden Kule and the equitable right which shields the superior
in the enjoyment of his larger powers. The functions and privi-
leges of the peer are in some respects very different from those
of the peasant ; but the same law protects them both in their
several rights, and commands them both as to their several
duties. This theory thus established between all men a moral,
but not a mechanical equality. Higher and lower hold alike
the same relation to the supreme ruler and ordainer of the com-
monwealth, God ; yet they hold different relations to each other
in society, corresponding to their differing capacities and fit-
nesses, which equity itself demands. Job understood this
maxim of Bible republicanism, as he shows (chap. xxxi. 13, 14,
15): "If I did despise the cause of my man-servant or of my
maid-servant, when they contended with me; what, then, shall I
do when God risetli up ? and when he visiteth, what shall I
answer him ? Did not he that made me in the womb make him ? "
So Paul, two thousand years later (Eph. vi. 9 ; Col. iv. 1).
Kuoio: give to your oooXoi those things which are just and equal.
The two teach the same doctrine . On the one hand, they assert
the relation of superior and inferior, with their unequal fran-
chises ; on the other hand, they assert in the same breath the
equal moral obligation of both as bearing the common relation
to the one divine maker and judge.

The radical social theory asserts, under the same name, a
totally different doctrine; its maxim is "all men are l)orn free
and equal." It supposes the social fabric constituted of indi-
viduals naturally absolute and sovereign as its integers, and

500 AXTI-LIIiLICAL THEORIES OF EIGHTS.

tliis bj some sort of social contract, in entering wliicli individual
men act witli a freedom equally complete as to God and each
other. It defines each one's natural liberty as freedom to do
whatever he wishes, and his civil liberty, after he optionally
enters society, as that remainder of his natural prerogative not
surrendered to the social contract. Consequently the theory
teaches that exactly the same surrender must be exacted of each
one under this social contract, whence each individual is in-
alienably entitled to all the same franchises and functions in
society as well as to his moral equahty ; so that it is a natural in-
iquity to withhold from any adult person by law any prerogative
which is legally conferred on any other member in society. The
equahty must be mechanical as well as moral, else the society is
charged with natural injustice.

Every fair mind sees that this is not only a different but an
opposite social theory. Yet its advocates are accustomed to
advance it as the equivalent of the other, to teach it under the
same nomenclature, and to assert that the difference between
them is purely visionary. So widespread and profound is this
confusion of thought, that the majority of the American people and
of their teachers practically know and hold no other theory than
the Jacobin one. They assume, as a matter of course, that it is
this theory which is the firm logical basis of constitutional gov-
ernment; whereas historj' and science show that it is a fatal
heresy of thought, which uproots every possible foundation of
just freedom, and gi-ounds only the most ruthless despotism.
But none the less is this the passionate belief of millions, for
the sake of which they are willing to assail the Bible itself.

The least reflection points out that this theory involves the
following corollaries: (1), There can be no just imputation of
the consequences of conduct from one human being to another
in society ; (2), No adult person can be justly debarred from any
privilege allowed to any other person in the order or society,
except for con\dction of crime; (3), All distinctions of "caste"
are essentially and inevitably wicked and oppressive; (4), Of
course every adult is equally entitled to the franchise of voting
and being voted for, and all restrictions here, except for the
conviction of crime, are natural injustice; (5), Equal rights and
suffrage ought to be conceded to women in every respect as to

ANTI-BIBLICAL THEORIES OF RIGHTS. 501

men. If any advocate of the Jacobin theory recoils from this
corollary, he is absolutely inconsistent, by reason of his bondage
to former prejudices and unreasoning habits of thought : so
argues John Stuart Mill irrefragably in his treatise on the Sub-
jection of Women. If the Jacobin theory be true, then woman
must be allowed access to every male avocation, including gov-
ernment, and war if she vsdsh.es it, to suffrage, to every political
office, to as absolute freedom from her husband in the marriasce
relation as she enjoyed before her union to him, and to as abso-
lute control of her own property and earnings as that claimed
by the single gentleman, as against her own husband. That
Mill infers correctly from his premises needs no arguing. If it
is a just principle that no adult male shall be debarred from
suffrage or office by reason of "race, color, or previous condition
of bondage," then indisputably no adult female can be justly
debarred from them by reason of sex, or previous legal subjec-
tion under the " common law." If it is a natural injustice to
debar an adult male from these rights because of a black or
yellow face, it must be an equal injustice to debar other adults
because of a beardless face. If kinky hair should not disfran-
chise, then by parative reasoning flowing tresses should not
disfranchise. (6). Last, if the Jacobin theory be true, then
slavery in all its forms must be essentially unrighteous ; of which
institution the essential feature is, that citizens are invested with,
property in the involuntary labor of adult human beings, and
control over their persons. The absolute necessity of this cor-
ollary is now asserted by all who hold the Jacobin theory in-
telligently : as, for instance, by Mr. Mill. They invariably de-
duce their doctrine from those principles, and they say, that
since those principles are established, argument on the subject
of liuman bondage is absolutely closed ; and history gives this
curious illustration of the necessity of this logical connection :
that the first application of the doctrine of theoretical aboli-
tionism ever made was that applied by Robespierre, the master
of the French Jacobins, to the French colonies. TVe are told
that he prided himself much on his political philosophy, and
that one day when he was expounding it in the national as-
sembly, some one said : " Monsieur, those dogmas, if carried out,
would require the emancipation of all the Africans in the

502 ANTI-BIBLICAL THEORIES OF RIGHTS.

colonies, wliicli would, of course, ruin tliose precious appen-
dages of France." To wliich. he angrilj- replied : " Then let the col-
onies jjerish, rather than this social philosophy shall be denied."
Of which the result was, in fact, the St. Domingo of to-day.

Now my purpose in this essay is not at all to discuss these
two theoides of human rights, or to refute the latter and estabUsh
the former. Although such discussion would strictly belong to
the science of moral philosophy, and is indeed a vital part
thereof, the fastidious might perhaps deem it unfit for a theo-
logical review in these " piping times of peace." My sole object
is to examine the scriptural question, whether or not the integ-
rity of the Bible can be made to consist vrith. the Jacobin theory
and its necessary corollaries ; and this inquiry is purely religi-
ous and theological. The Christian church as such has no direct
didactic concern with it, and no legislative and judicial concern
-s^-ith it, except as it furnishes infidelity weapons to assail God's
Word. Our church has always properly held, that whenever
any science so-called, whether psychological, moral, or even
physical, is iised to assail the integrity of the rule of faith, that
use at once makes the defensive discussion of that hostile science
a theological function, both proper and necessary for the church.
I cite from our Confession a notable instance : For centuries the
psychological problem concerning the rise of volition has been
debated between philosophers, the Scotists approving, and the
Thomists denying, the equilibrium and self-determination of the
will. • The Westminster Assembly perceived that the Scotists'
psychology was employed to sophisticate the revealed doctrines
of original sin and effectual calling. They, therefore, in Chaj).
ix., " Of Free Will," determine and settle so much of this doc-
trine of psychology as is needed to substantiate the Scriptures.
So, recently, our Assembly, upon perceiving that a doctrine of
mere j)hysical science, evolution, was liable to be used for im-
pugning the testimony of Scripture, dealt with that foreign doc-
trine both didactically and judicially. They were consistent.
For, I repeat, whenever any doctrine from any whither is em-
ployed to assail that divine testimony which our Lord has com-
mitted to the chui'ch, there the defensive discussion of that
doctrine has become theological, and is an obligatory part of
the church's divine testimony.

ANTI-BIBLICAL THEORIES OF EIGHTS. 503

But my purpose does uot go so far as even tliis. My object
is merely to point out tlie coming contest, and to warn tlie de-
fenders of the faith of its certainty. My wish is to make all
Christians face this plain question : Will you surrender the
inspiration of the Scriptui'es to these assaults of a social science
so-called? If not, what? That the issue has been made and
must be met, I shall show by laying two sets of facts alongside
of each other. One is, that the Jacobin theory, alread}^ held by
millions and confidently claiming for itself all the honors of re-
publicanism and liberty, does assert, and must assert, all the
corollaries above stated. The other set of facts is, that the
Scriptures deny every one of them, and that with a fatal dis-
tinctness which no honest exposition can evade. Doubtless,
during this long and tremendous conflict we shall see the same
thing repeated which we have seen in recent decades : timid and
Tincandid minds, anxious still to "ride a fence " after it is totally
blown away by the hurricane of anti-christian attack, attempting
to reconcile opposites by various exegetical wrigglings. But we
shall again see it end in futility, and candid assailant and candid
defender will both agree that the Bible means what it says, and
must either fall squarely or must stand by the overthrow of all
attacking parties. The rest of our work ^dll therefore be little
more than the examination of the actual teachings of Scripture.

1. The Jacobin theory totally repudiates all imputation of the
consequences of moral conduct from one person to another as
irrational and essentially unjust. It declares that " imputed
guilt is imputed nonsense." From its premises it must declar§
thus, for it asserts that each individual enters social existence as
an independent integer, possessed of complete natural liberty
and full equality. But the Bible scheme of social existence is
full of this imputation. I shall not dwell upon the first grand
case, the sin and fall of the race in Adam, although it is still
determining, in a tremendous manner, the conditions of each in-
dividual's entrance into social existence. I add other instances,
some of which are equally extensive. " The woman was first in
the transgression," for which God laid upon Eve two j^enalties
(Gen. iii. 16), subordination to her husband and the sorrows
peculiar to motherhood. The New Testament declares (1 Tim.
ii. 11 to end) that it is right her daughters shall continue to en-

504 AXTI-BIBLICAL THEORIES OF EIGHTS.

dure these penalties to tlie end of the world. (See also 1 Peter^
iii. 1-6.) In Genesis ix. 25-27, Ham, the son of Noah, is guilty
of an unfilial crime. His posterity are condemned with him and
share the penalty to this day. In Ex. xx. 5, God declares that
he will visit the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the
third and fourth generations. Amalek met Israel in the time of
his flight and distress ^dth robbery and murder, instead of hos-
pitality. Not only were the immediate actors punished by
Joshua, but the descendants of Amalek are excluded forever
from the house of the Lord, for the crime of their fathers.
(Deut. XXV. 19.) It is needless to multiply instances, except
one more, which shall refute the favorite dream of the rational-
ists that Jesus substituted a milder and juster law. For this
Jesus said to the Jews of his own day (Matt, xxiii. 32-36) : " Fill
ye up then the measure of 3'our fathers : . . . that upon you
may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the
blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias, son of
Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar.
Yerily I sa}^ unto you, all these things shall come upon this
generation." We thus find this principle of imputation extended
into the New Testament, by the authority of Jesus himself, as a
just principle.

2. Whereas Jacobinism asserts that no privilege or franchise
enjoyed by some adults in the state can be justly withheld from
any other order of adults, God's word entirely discards this rule.
Not to speak of the subordination of women and domestic bond-
age (of which more anon), God distributed the franchises iin-
equally in the Hebrew commonwealth. The priestly family
possessed, by inheritance, certain teaching and ruling functions
which the descendants of no other tribe could share. There was
a certain law of primogeniture, entitled the right of the first-
born, which the younger sons did not share equalh% and which
the father himself could not alienate. (Deut. xxi. 15, 16.) The
fathers of houses (Ex. xviii. 21 ; Josh. xxii. 14), in A^rtue of their
patriarchal authority, held a senatorial dignity, and this evi-
dently for life. (See also the history of Barzillai.)

In the New Testament, the apostle Peter (1 Eph. ii. 13) enjoins
Christians to submit themselves " to every ordinance of man for
the Lord's sake, whether it be to the king as supreme, or unto

. ANTI-BIBLICAL THEOEIES OF EIGHTS. 505

governors, as imto tliem that are sent by him for the punishment
of e\al-doers and for the praise of them that do well." Here a
distribution of powers between different ranks, emperor, procon-
suls, and subjects, is distinctly recognized. " Eender, therefore,
to all their dues : tribute to whom tribute is due ; custom to
whom custom; fear to whom fear; honor to whom honor."
(Rom, xiii. 7.) "Likewise, also, these filthy dreamers defile the
flesh, despise dominion, and speak evil of dignities." (Jude, 8.)
3. Nothing is more obnoxious to the principles of Jacobinism
than what it denounces as " caste." It delights to use this word
because it is freighted with bad associations derived from the
stories we hear of the oppressive hereditary distinctions of
the people in Hindostan. Of course there is a sense in which
every just conscience reprehends inequalities of caste. This is
where they are made pretest for depriving an order or class of
citizens of privileges which belong to them of right, and for
whose exercise they are morally and intellectually qualified.
But this is entirely a different thing from saying that all the
different orders of persons in a state are naturally and morally
entitled to all the same privileges, whether qualified or not,
simply because they are men and adults. The Jacobin trick of
sophistry is to confound these different propositions together ;
and when they denounce "wicked caste," the application they
make of their denunciation includes not only oppressive inequal-
ities, but every difference in the distribution of powers and
privileges. Now, the Scriptures recognize and ordain such
distribution ; or, if the reader pleases, such distinctions of caste
in the latter sense. Such is the stubborn fact. Thus, in the
Hebrew commonwealth, the descendants of Levi were disfran-
chised of one privilege which belonged to all their brethren of
the other tribes; and enfranchised with another j^rivilege from
which all their brethren were excluded. A Levite could not
hold an inch of land in severalty. (Num. xviii. 22, 23.) No
member of another tribe, not even of the princely tribe of Judah,
could perform even the lowest function in the tabernacle. (Heb.
vii. 13, 14.) These differences are nowhere grounded in any
statement that the children of Levi were more or less intelligent
and religious than their fellow-citizens. Another " caste distinc- '
tion " appears among the descendants of Levi himself. The sons

506 ANTI-BIBLICAL THEOEIES OP EIGHTS.

of Aaron aloue could offer sacrifices or incense in the sanctuary.
The Levites could only be underlings or assistants to their
brethren the priests. Among the sons of Aaron another hered-
itary distinction presents itself. The individual who had the
right of the first born took the high priesthood, with its superior
prerogatives. He alone could go into the Holy of Holies. He
alone could offer the sacrifice on the great annual day of atone-
ment. But this privilege was limited by a certain hereditary dis-
qualification. He could only marry a virgin (Lev. xxi. 13, 14),
and Avas forbidden to marry a widow (as his fellow-citizens
might legally do), however virtuous and religious. A "caste
distinction" is also found among the bondmen, whose subjection
was legalized by the constitution. A person of Hebrew blood
could only be enslaved for six years. A person of foreign blood
could be held in hereditary slavery, although born within the
land of Israel as much as the other. It was also provided that
the treatment of bondmen of Hebrew blood should be more len-
ient. (Lev. XXV. 42-47.) A "caste distinction" was also pro-
vided concerning the entrance of persons of foreign blood into
the Hebrew state and church. (Exodus XA'ii. 16 ; Deut. xxiii.
3-8.) The descendants of Amalek were forever inhibited. The
descendants of Ammon and Moab were debarred to the tenth
generation. The Egyptians and Edomites could be admitted at
the third generation ; the one, because their patriarch Esau was
brother to Jacob, the other, because the Israelites had once hved
in Egypt. ^

Let the inference from these histories be clearly understood.
It is not claimed that these caste distinctions established by God
himself obligate us positively to establish similar distinctions in
our day. But the fact that God once saw fit to establish them
does prove that they cannot be essentially sinful. To assert that
they are, impugns the righteousness of God. Whence it follows,
in direct opposition to the Jacobin theory, that should suitable
circumstances again arise such "caste distinctions" may be
righteous. It will be exclaimed that the New Testament re-
versed all this. We shall be reminded of Paul's famous decla-
ration (Col. iii. 11) : " Where there is neither Jew nor Greek,
circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor
free, but Christ is all and in all " ; or this (Gal. iii. 28) : " There is

ANTI-BIBLICAL THEORIES OF RIGHTS. 507

neither Jew uor Greek, there is neither boud nor free, there is
neither male nor female, for ye are all one in Christ Jesiis." But
before a literal and mechanical equality can be inferred from
these, it must be settled what the Holy Spirit meant by being
"one in Christ," and whether the parts which are combined to
construct a component unity are not always unequal instead of
equal. The latter is certainly the apostle's teaching when he
compares the spiritual body to the animal body, with many
members of dissimilar honor. The apostle himself demonstrates
that he never designed the levelling sense to be put upon his
words by proceeding after he had uttered them to subject women
in one sense to an inequality by imposing upon them ecclesiasti-
cal subordination, and even a different dress, in the church.
The Scriptures thus teach that all distinctions of caste are not
unjust in the sense charged by the current theory.

4. God's commonwealth was not founded on universal suffrage.
That he rejected the Jacobinical principle is plain from the his-
tory of the Gibeonites. They were exempted by covenant with
Joshua from the doom of extinction, and retained a title to
homes for many generations upon the soil of Palestine, and, as
we see from 2 Sam. xxi. 6, they were very carefully protected in
certain rights by the government. They were not domestic
slaves, neither were they fully enfranchised citizens. From the
higher franchises of that rank they were shut out by a hereditary
disqualification, and this was done by God's express enactment.
(Josh. ix. 27.) This instance impinges against the Jacobin
theory in two other ways, indicated in our second and thijrd
heads. Individual descendants of the Gibeonites, however law-
abiding and gifted with natural capacity, did not enjoy ^'■la
carriere ouverte aux taleiits" equally with the young Israelites,
which the Jacobin theory demands indiscriminately as the in-
alienable right of all. And to make the matter worse, the Scrip-
ture declares that this disqualification descended by imputation
from the guilt of the first generation's paganism and fraud upon
Joshua.

5. We have shown that the claim known as that of women's
rights is an inevitable corollary of the radical theory. Our pur-
pose here is not to debate the wisdom or equity of that claim,
but to show what God thinks of it. In Gen. iii. 16, he legislates

508 ANTI-BIBLICAL THEORIES OF EIGHTS.

for Eve as the representative of all her daughters, putting her in
subordination to the authority of her husband: "Thy desire
shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee." If a
Hebrew landholder had male descendants when he died, his
daiighters inherited no share in his land. They could inherit
land in cases where there was no male heir. And this was the
legislation, not of Moses, but of God himself. (Num. xxvii. 8.)
It is more decisive to add, that the New Testament continues to
assign subordination to women. 1 Cor. xi. 3: "The head of the
woman is the man." 1 Cor. xiv. 34: "Let your women keep
silence in the churches, for it is not permitted unto them to
speak ; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also
saith the law." Eph. v. 22-24: "Wives, submit yourselves unto
your oAvn husbands, as unto the Lord, for the husband is the
head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church. . . .
Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives
be to their own husbands in everything." 1 Tim. ii. 11, 12 :
"Let the woman learn in silence, with all subjection. But I
suffer not a woman to teach nor to usurp authority over the
man, but to be in silence," [ouok abdevzexv di^opb^, "nor to domi-
nate man." The concept of usurpation is only implicit in the
Greek verb.) 1 Tim. v. 14 : "I mil, therefore, that the younger
women marry, bear children, guide the house, give none occasion
to the adversary to speak reproachfully." Titus, ii. 4, 5: "That
they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their hus-
bands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, keepers at
home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of
God be not blasphemed." 1 Pet. iii. 1, 5, 6 : " Likewise, ye
wives, be in subjection to your own husbands, that if any obey
not the word they also V\^ithout the word may be won by the
conversation of the wives ; for after this manner in the old time
the holy women also, who trusted in God, adorned themselves,
being in subjection to their own husbands, even as Sarah obeyed
Abraham, calling him lord."

Thus, explicit and repeated, are the precepts of the Scripture
on this head. In the new dispensation they are even plainer
than in the old. How many thousands of women are there^
professed members of Christ's church, who rid themselves of all
these precepts with a disdainful toss, saying: "Oh! Paul was but

ANTI-BIBLICAL THEOKIES OF EIGHTS. 509

a cnisty old bachelor. It was the men who legislated thus in their
pride of sex. Had women ^\^:itten, all would have been differ-
ent." I would request such fair reasoners to look this question
steadily in the face. Is this the legislation of men, or of God
speaking by men? If they say the former, is not this virtual
infidelity ? If the latter, had they not better take care, " lest
haply they be found even fighting against God." instead of
against a "crusty old bachelor"?

One of the weak evasions attempted is to plead that this sub-
ordination of the women of Peter's and Paul's day was enjoined
only because of their low grade of intelligence and morality,
these female Christians being supposed to be but sorry creat-
ures, recently convei-ted from paganism. The apostles refute
this, as does chiu'ch history, both of which give the highest
praise to the Christian women of the primitive chiu'ch. Espe-
cially does the apostle Peter ruin this sophism when he illus-
trates the duty of obedience by the godly example of the noblest
princesses of Israel's heroic age.

6. The sixth and last issue between Jacobinism and the in-
spiration of Scripture is concerning the lawfulness of domestic
slavery. The two sides of this issue are defined with perfect
sharpness. The political theory says the subjection of one hu-
man being in bondage to another, except for conviction of crime,
is essentially and always unrighteous. The Scriptures indisput-
ably declare, in both Testaments, that it is not always essen-
tially imrighteous, since they legitimate it under suitable cir-
cumstances, and declare that godly masters may so hold the re-
lation as to make it equitable and righteous. I shall not now
go fully into the scriptural argument on this point, because my
whole object is gained by showdng that the contradiction exists,
without discussing which side has the right, and because I have
so fully discussed the whole question in my Defence of Yii^ginia
and the South. It is only necessary to name the leading facts :
(«,) That God predicted the rise of the institution of domestic
bondage as the penalty and remedy for the bad morals of those
«ubjected to it (Gen. ix. 25); {!>,) That God protects property in
slaves, exactly as any other kind of property, in the sacred
Decalogue itself (Exod. xx. 17) ; (c,) That numerous slaves were
bestowed on Abraham, the "friend of God," as marks of the

510 ANTI-BIBLICAL THEORIES OF RIGHTS.

favor of divine jDrovidence (Gen. xxiv. 35) ; {d,) That the rela-
tion of master and bondman was sanctified by the administra-
tion of a divine sacrament, which the bondman received on the
ground of the master's faith (Gen. xvii. 27) ; {e,) That the angel
of the covenant himself remanded a fugitive slave, Hagar, to her
mistress, but afterwards assisted her in the same journey when
legally manumitted (Gen. xxi. 17-21) ; (/,) That the civil laws
of Moses expressly allowed Hebrew citizens to purchase pagans
as life-long and hereditary slaves (Lev. xxv. 44-46) ; [g,] That
the law declares such slaves (that is, their involuntary labor) to
be property. The reader is advised to consult here the irre-
fragable exegesis of Dr. Moses Stuart of Andover. He will see
that this argument is no construction of sectional prejudice.
The New Testament left the institution with precisely the same
sanction as the Old. Were there any ground for the plea that
the Old Testament also legalized polygamy and capricious di-
vorce, which we now regard as immoral, this fact would utterly
refute it. For while the New Testament j^rohibited these wrongs,
it left slavery untouched. But I also deny that the Old Testa-
ment anywhere legalized polygamy and capricious divorce. To
charge it in the sense of this evasive plea imj)ugns the inspira-
tion of Moses and the prophets. That is to say, it is virtual in-
fidelity. And this infidel assault upon Moses and the prophets
equally attacks Christ and his apostles. It is vain to advance
the theory (which is but the old Socinian theory) that the New
Testament corrected and amended whatever was harsh or bar-
barous in the Old. For, in the first place, I utterly deny the
assertion. The New Testament left the relation of master and
bondman just where Moses placed it. And, in the second place,
Jesus and his apostles expressly guarantee the inspiration of
Moses, without any reservation (see Luke xvi. 31 ; John v. 46 ;
Luke xxiv. 26, 27; 2 Tim. iii. 16, 17; John xii. 36; Acts, xxviii.
25 ; Heb. iii. 7 ; 2 Peter i. 21), so that they have embarked their
credit as divine and infallible teachers along with that of Moses.
Both must stand or fall together. Whenever a person declares
that whatsoever he speaks is given to him to speak from God
(John xvii. 8), and then assures us that another person has
spoken infallibly and divinely, upon ascertaining that the latter
has in fact spoken erroneously and immorally, we can only con-

ANTI-BIBLICAL THEORIES OF RIGHTS. 511

demn the former as both mistaken and dishonest. (The bhis-
phemy is not mine I) This stubborn corollary every clear mind
must draw sooner or later, and not all the rationalistic gloziugs
of deceitful exegesis can prevent it. He who attacks the inspira-
tion of Moses attacks also the inspiration and the moral charac-
ter of Jesus. "No man can serve two masters." Let every one
make up his mind honestly either to reject the Bible as a fable,
and thus preserve his Jacobin humanitarianism, or frankly ta
surrender the latter in order to retain the gospel.

But let us see what the New Testament says concerning the
relation of master and bondman. It does indeed command all,
if they assume this relation, to fulfil it in a Christian spirit, in the
fear of an impartial God. (Eph. vi. 9.) It also prohibits all
unrighteous abuses of the relation, whether by masters (CoL
iv. 1) or by bondmen. (Col. iii. 22-25.) Slave-holders, like
the godly centurion (Luke vii. 2-9) and Cornelius (Acts x.
34, 35), are commended for their Christian consistency, without
a word of caution or exception, on account of this relation. The
Bedeemer, in Luke xvii. 7-10, grounds his argument to prove
that not even the truest Christian obedience can bring God in
our debt, upon a logical analogy, whose very point is that the
master is legally invested with a prior title to, and property in,
the labor of his bondman. In the beautiful parable of the prod-
igal son (Luke xv. 19), when Christ would illustrate the thorough-
ness of his contrition, he does it by using the acknowledged fact
that the condition of the hired servant in the slave-holder's house-
hold was the lowest and least privileged, i. e., the do~jlo^ was
above the ficadcoro-. The apostles enjoin on bondmen consci-
entious service to their masters, even when unjust (1 Pet. ii. 18,
19) ; but so much the more willing and conscientious when those
masters are brother members in the Christian church. (1 Tim.
vi. 1, 2.) The Apostle Paid holds that, if masters do their duty,
the relation may be lawfully continued, and is just and equita-
ble. The Apostle Paul remands a fugitive slave to his master
Philemon, after that slave's conversion, and that although he is
at the time in great need of the assistance of such a servant.
And so distinctly does he recognize Philemon's lawful property
in the involuntary labor of his fugitive slave that he actually
binds himself, in writing, to pay its pecuniary value himself, that

512 ANTI-BIBLICAL THEORIES OE RIGHTS.

thereby he may gain free forgiveness for Onesimus. In 1 Tim.
vi. 3-5, the apostle condemns such as would dare to dispute the
righteous obligation of even Christian bondmen, as proud, igno-
rant, perverse, contentious, untruthful, corrupt in mind and
mercenary; and he requires believers to separate themselves
from such teachers.

The glosses which attempt to evade these clear declarations
are well known. They assert that, though Christ and his apos-
tles knew that the relation was intrinsically wicked, they for-
bore to condemn it expressly, on account of its wide prevalence,
the jealousy of owners, the dangers of popular convulsions and
politic caution; while they secretly provided for its extinction
by inculcating gospel principles in general. Such is the most
decent reconciliation, which even the joious and evangelical Scott
can find between his Bible and his politics. Every perspica-
cious mind sees that it is false to all the facts of the history,
dishonorable to Christ, and inconsistent with all true concep-
tions of his inspiration and Messiahshij). He and his aj^ostles
absolutely deny that they keep back any precept from any con-
sideration of poHcy or caution. (John xvii. 8 ; Acts xx. 20, 27.)
They expressly repudiate this theory of their mission, as though
they had this deceitful theory then before their eyes. They
invariably attack other evils, such as idolatry, polygamy, and
impurity, which were far more prevalent and more strongly
intrenched in prejudices than domestic slavery. They ground
the spread and protection of their gospel on the omnipotence of
God, not on the policy of men, and reject with a lofty and holy
disdain all this species of paltering to sin which this gloss im-
putes to them.

The honest student, then, of the New Testament can make
nothing less of its teachings on this point than that domestic
slavery, as defined in God's word and practiced in the manner
enjoined in the Epistles, is still a lawful relation under the new
dispensation as well as under the old. Let me be allowed to
pause here, and add a few words in explanation of the relation
which the orthodox Presbyterian Church in America has always
held to this subject. Since domestic bondage is a civic and
secular relation, which God has declared may be lawfully held
under suitable conditions, the church may not prohibit it cats-

ANTI-BIBLICAL THEOEIES OF RIGHTS. 513

gorically to her members, nor may she interfere ^vdth the com-
monwealth by her spiritual authority, either to institute it or to
abolish it. Had her Lord declared it to be intrinsically sinful,
then it woiild have been her duty to prohibit it to her members,
and to enforce this prohibition by her spiritual discipline, in
spite of the commonwealth's allowance, or even positive injunc-
tion. The church and her presbyters, then, have no concern to
favor or opj^ose this civic relation, but only to protect the integ-
rity of her divine rule of faith as involved in the debate con-
cerning it. Her only other concern with it is so to evangelize
mpsters and bondmen as to make the relation a blessing to both,
and to retrench all its sinful abuses. Now, then, if the oppo-
nents of this relation object to it and urge its overthrow on the
ground that it is economically less profitable or less ^^romotive
of economic advantage than the hireling systems of labor, we,
as presbyters, have nothing whatever to say, although fully
aware that the testimony of facts and the government itself
have repeatedly contradicted that position. Had its opponents
claimed any legal or constitutional arguments entitling them to
meddle with it or restrict it in States other than their own, we,
as presbyters, should have been absolutely silent. Had its op-
23onents asserted that we were grievously neglecting the duties
of the relation and permitting abuses of it so as to impair the
happiness of our dependent fellow-creatures, and to displease
the God of the poor, we, as Christians, should have bowed
meekly, as to the faithful rebuke of friends, and should have
been thankful for their aid and instruction to teach us how to
use the relation more righteously and mercifully. It is when
they assert that the relation is intrinsically wicked, and that even
its maintenance without alnises is to be condemned by the spir-
itual authority of the church and prevented by her discipline,
that they obtrude the issue, and the one issue, which we, as
presbyters, are entitled and bound to meet; for they thereby
assail the morahty, and thus the truth, of those Scrif)tures which
God has given to the church as her testimony, which, if she
does not uphold, she ceases to be a cluirch, and "they teach for
doctrines the commandments of men," which Christ prohibits
his church either to do or to endure. What I thus declare con-
cerning this last point of domestic bondage I now also assert

Vol. I:i.-33.

514 AXTI-BIBLICAL THEOEIES OF BIGHT^;.

conceruiiig the five previous ones. Tlie chuix-li has no commis-
sion to advocate or to oppose any pohtical doctrines, logical or
illogical, Jacobinical, republican, or royalist, as such. It is only
when they are so advanced as to taint the integrity of her divine
rule of faith that they concern her, and then her concern is only
to defend the testimony her Lord has committed to her, which
she must do against " all comers," • be their pretest what it
may.

It is from this point of view that I say it behooves the watch-
men upon the walls of Zion to consider and estimate the extent
of the danger now arising from this source. If they observe
intelligently they will see that peril is portentous. They will
detect this radical theory of human rights and equality, born of
atheism, but masquerading in the garb of true Bible republican-
ism, everywhere teaching corollaries — which they teach inevita-
blv because they follow necessarily from their first principles —
which contradict the express teachings of Scripture. We see
this theory passionately held by millions of nominal Christians
in the most Protestant lands, perhaps by the great majority of
such, with the blind and passionate devotion of partizanship.
Every sensible man knows the power of political paiiizanship as
one of the most difficult things in the world to overcome, by
either truth or conscience. Hence, we have no right to be sur-
prised that this collision between the popular political theory,
so flattering to the self-will- and pride of the human heart, and
so clad in the raiment of pretended philanthropy on the one
part, and the Holy Scriptures on the other ]3art, requiring men,
as they do, to bow their pride and self-T^ill to a divine author-
ity, has become the occasion of tens of thousands making them-
selves blatant infidels, and of millions becoming virtual unbe-
lievers. Those who wish to hold both the contradictories have
indeed been busy for two generations wearing veils of special
pleadings and deceitful expositions of Scripture wherewith to
conceal the ine%itable contradiction. But these veils are con-
tinually wearing too thin to hide it, and the bolder minds rend
them one after another and cast them away. The only perma-
nent effect of these sophisms is to damage the respectability of
the Christian bodies and scholars who employ them, and to de-
bauch their own intellectual honesty. Meantime, the authority

ANTI-BIBLICAL THEOEIES OF RIGHTS. 515

of Holy Scripture as an infallible rule of faitli sinks lower and
lower with the masses of Protestant Christendom. Is it not now
a rarity to find a Christian of culture who reads his Bible with
the full faith which his grandparents were wont to exercise ; and
when an educated man now-a-dajs avows that he still does so, dok.3-
he not excite a stare from other Christians? The recent history
of the church presents startling instances of this departure of
her spiritual power and glory. When the fashion of the day
betrayed the excellent Dr. Thomas Scott into the insertion of
the wretched sophism exposed above in his commentary on the
Epistles, the "Evangelical party" in the Anglican Church was
powerful, respectable and useful. It stood in the forefront of
EngHsh Christianity, boasting a galaxy of the greatest British
divines, statesmen and scholars. Now who so poor as to do it
reverence? Komauizers, Eitualists, Broad Churchmen, in the
Anglican body, speak of it as a dead donkey, and glory over its-
impotency. So the great evangelical Baptist body was a glori-
ous bulwark of the gospel in the days of Robert Hall, Eyland^
and Andrew Eidler. To-day we see it so honey-combed witL
rationalism that Mr. Spurgeon can no longer give the Baptist
Union the countenance of his orthodoxy; and he testifies that
attacks may be heard from its pulpits upon every distinctively
evangelical point. What is it that has so wofully tainted these-
once excellent bodies ? Is not a part of the answer to be found
here : that the Quaker Clarkson, with his pretended inner light
his preferred guide rather than God's Avritten word, and his So-
cinianizing theory of inspiration in attacking the British and.
New England slave trade (which deserved his attack), alsO'
attacked the relation of domestic servitude with indiscriminate^
rage, and supported his rationalism Avitli arguments of human,
invention, piously borrowed even from French atheism ? British.
Christianity, awakened at last to tardy remorse for the bad emi- •
nence of their race as the leading slave catchers of the worlds
was seized with a colic-spasm of virtue on that subject, and very
naturally sought to atone for its iniquities in the one extreme by
rushing into the other. Thus it not only aimed to seize the
glory of suppressors of the African slave trade — a glory which
belonged to Virginia, first of all the commonwealths of the Avorld,
by a prior title of forty years — but became fanatically aboli—

516 ANTI-LIBLICAL THEORIES OF EIGHTS.

tionist. Then tlie prol^lem for evangelical fanatics was liow
to reconcile their anti-scriptural dogma with the Scriptures.
With this problem Exeter Hall Christianity has been wrestling
for fiftj years by the deplorable methods above described, and
while they have not made the reconciliation, they have suc-
ceeded by those methods in making the world skeptical of their
sincerity, and in sowdng broadcast the seeds of a licentious
rationalism. Their pupils, when taught to interpret the unpal-
atable poHtical truth out of the declarations of Jesus, Moses and
Paul, continue to use the same slippery methods to interpret the
unpalatable theological truths also out of the Bible, as deprav-
ity, predestination, gratuitous justification, inability, eternal
retribution.

The most sorrowful aspect of the matter is that, as fast as the
candor of these Christians forces them to recognize the contra-
diction as real, they usually elect to throw their faith overboard
rather than their politics. This election they not seldom carry
out openly, but more often covertly and gradually, giving up first
their faith in plenary inspiration, then in the Mosaic inspiration,
at last in the Bible itself, and employing progressive forms of
exegetical jugglery, to ease themselves down from the lower posi-
tion to the lowest. Perhaps the most melancholy and notorious
of such election is that seen in the great American divine and
expositor, who has done more than any other Presbyterian to
spread the humanitarian theology through the bulk of his de-
nomination, whose doctrines indeed, overflowing the earlier and
safer teachings of the senior Alexander and Hodge, have covered
them out of sight in the present current of religious thoiight.
This great man declares deliberately and solemnly in his pub-
lished works, that were he shut up to the alternative between ac-
cepting the sense of Scripture so obvious to the old interpreters,
which recognizes domestic servitude as a relation which may be
lawful under suitable conditions, or of sun-endering his political
opinions on that subject, he should throw away his Bible in
order to retain those opinions; and he solemnly warns that class
of expositors represented by Drs. Hodge, Thornwell and N. L.
Kice, that they had better stop their efforts to substantiate that
exposition of Scripture, because if they succeeded the only effect
would be, not to defend old institutions, but to drive all right-

ANTI-BIBLICAL THEORIES OF RIGHTS. 517

minded Cliristians like himself into infidelity. Let the reader
look also at the case of Bishop Colenso, who, when he had
expended the whole learning and labor of his latter years in
attacking the inspiration of the Old Testament, which in his
ordination vows he had sworn to defend, expressly accounted for
and justified his course by the fact that he had adopted the new
humanitarian poHtics. The reader may see a more flagrant in-
stance nearer home. Ingersoll, the son of an Old School Pres-
byterian minister, glories in trampling his father's Bible in the
mire of foulest abuse. He tells the public that his abohtionism
is a prime mo\dng cause mth him to spurn Christianity.

Such is the outlook. On the other side, adverse circumstances
virtually paralyze all the human powers which should be arrayed
in defence of the Bible. Doubtless, many divines remain in the
countries and communions infected who see the truth and be-
lieve it. They are called conservative, and wish to be considered
so. But the only element of conservatism which they call into
action at this critical juncture is caution, a caution which prevents
their jeopardizing their ovm. quiet and prosperity by coming to
the front and meeting the insolent aggression of the new opin-
ions. They dissent, but practically they acquiesce. They com-
mit the same mistake in tactics which General Charles Lee com-
mitted one hundred and ten years ago at the battle of Monmouth,
and which he himself expressed so pungently in his impertinent
reply to his commanding general. When Washington met him
retiring instead of attacking, as he had been ordered, he asked
him, with stern dignity : " General Lee, what does this mean ?"
To which the witty Englishman replied: "I suppose it means
that I am imbued vdth rather too much of that rascally virtue,
caution, in which your excellency is known to excel." Wash-
ington was cautious, but he knew when to be cautious and when
overcaution became the most fearful rashness, and vigorous au-
dacity the only true prudence. There seems no encouragement
to expect that these more enhghtened friends of Scripture in-
spiration will employ the Washingtoniau tactics in the impend-
ing conflicts. History teaches us that thus far in its preliminary
stages, while still possessed of the superior weight of character,
position, and even numbers, they have in every instance so mis-
placed their caution as to give the victory to which they were

518 ANTI-BIBLICAL THEOKIES OF EIGHTS.

entitled to the insolent and aggressive minority. How will sucli
men act now that that minority has become a majority flushed
with triumph ?

Thus circumstances make it, luimanly speaking, certain that
there is but one small quarter of Protestant Christendom from
which frank opposition to the new opinions is to be expected.
The current sweeps too strongly, the error is too popular. Such
determined opposition as would be adequate to stem it would be
too inconvenient. Xow the circumstance which is so untoward
for the cause of truth is this, that the conquering section in
America, in order to carry out its purposes, found it desirable to
load that obscure district of Christendom with mountains of
obloquy, heaped on it with a systematic and gigantic diligence
for more than a generation, and they have succeeded to their
heart's content in making that district odious and contemptible
throughout the Protestant world. Thus, whatever of hard-
earned experience, whatever of true insight, whatever of faithful
and generous zeal the good men of that section may desire to
bring to the defence of the common Christianity, the world is
determined beforehand to reject. " Can any good come out of
Nazareth?" The world has been told, that of course warnings
and declarations coming from that quarter have a perverse
source. This will be believed. All that the enemies of the
Bible need do to neutralize our honest eflbi-ts in the great de-
fence will be to cry, " Oh, those are the extravagances of a sour
pessimist!" or, "These are but the grumblings of defeated
malice and spite against the righteous conquerors!" Now, that
an indi^ddual servant of God and truth should be subjected to
such taunts is of exceedingly little moment. The momentous
result against the interest of the truth is, that the only part of
the king's army which is in condition to do staunch battle for his
truth is to be discounted in the tug of war. Thus the enemy of
the truth has adroitly succeeded in so arranging, beforehand,
the conditions of the campaign as to neutralize the powers of
resistance, and, humanly speaking, to insure the victory for him-
self, because the professed friends of the truth will be crushed
for want of that sturdy assistance which they themselves had pre-
viously disabled by slanders, prompted by their own interested
purposes. There will be seen in the result the grimmest " poetic

ANTI-BIBLICAL THEORIES OF RIGHTS. '519

justice " of divine providence. But tlie Lord still has faithful
servants, and the truth still has steadfast witnesses, who will
recognize no duty as superior to that of maintaining Christ's
testimony against all odds.

The facts just stated show that the struggle cannot but be long
and arduous. The friends of truth must therefore "with good
advice make war." While never shirking ecclesiastical discus-
sion when the aggressiveness of error challenges them to it, their
chief reliance for victory must be upon the faithful preaching of
the old-fashioned gosjDel and upon godly living. Like the martyr
church of Eevelation they must " conquer by the blood of the
Lamb and by the testimony of Jesus, and by not loving their
lives unto the death." Divisions in the ranks of the defenders
of the truth, professedly united up to a recent date, are a dis-
couras;ino; sisrn : but the general decline in the standard of Chris-
tian living which these have imbibed as an infection from the
rationalistic side is a far more ominous sign ; " the battle is the
Lord's, not man's." He will not deem it worth his while to work
a victory for the sake of a mere dead ecclesiastical orthodoxy,
which is to be as barren of the fruits of holy living as the code
of its assailants. If the communions which profess to stand up
for the integrity of Scripture have the nerve to resume strict
church discipline, to enforce on their professed members a strict
separation from the world, and thus to present to it a Christian
life beautiful and awful for its purity as of old, they will conquer.
If they lack this nerve and shirk this purification of themselves,
they will be defeated ; they will also be corrupted ; and after a
deceitful season of bustle and pretended Christian progress,
having the form of godliness but denying the power thereof, a
wide and long eclipse will come over Protestant Christendom,
the righteous jiidgment of a holy God. His true people, per-
haps for dreary generations, will be his despised and scattered
ones mourning in secret places; and when his times of revival
shall return again he will raise up new instruments of his own.

The friends of truth must contend in the spirit of humility.
"God resisteth the proud, but giveth strength unto the lowly."
They will, of course, recognize themselves as still possessed of
the honorable trust, God's truth ; they must, of course, believe
those who assail them as less honored with this noble trust than

520 ANTI-BIBLICAL THEOWES OF RIGHTS.

themselves; for else what cause have they to couteud? But
they must always remember the apostle's word, "What have ye
that ye did not receive ? Now then, why do ye glory in it as
though ye had not received it ? " If we really have this loyalty
to Scripture and to him who gave it, it is of grace. It is God's
inworking, not our personal credit. Had he not wrought it in
us, "the natural mind," which is just as native to us as to the
other sons of Adam, would doubtless be prompting iis, like other
rationalists, to treat the old gosj)el claims as "foolishness." And
there is a special reason for such Christian modesty in the case
of Southern Christians. The fact that we are now standing on
the side of Christ is due in part to a train of secular circumstances
with reference to which we had no free agency, and therefore no
personal credit. Providence ordained that the modern ration-
alism should select as its concrete object of attack our form of
society and our rights. God thus shiit us u\) to the study and
clear apprehension of the religious issue, and decided the side
we should take in the contest. But on the other hand, the
sophism is obtruded at this point which is just as siUy and ab-
surd as pride in us would be misplaced. This asserts that our
claim of a mission to testify for God's truth against any pro-
fessed Christians is necessarily the sinful vainglory in us. Ac-
cording to this absurdity the piirest church on earth could not
dare to testify that any other professed communion of Christians,
even prelatists, papists, Greeks, Socinians, were any less ortho-
dox than themselves. And if these are no less orthodox, what
right has this purest church to contend against any of them ?
" God resisteth the proud," but we apprehend also that he does
not hke sham charity and contemptible logical dishonesties.

Since the opinions and practices hostile to the Scriptures are
so protean, so subtile, and so widely diffused, there is no chance
for a successfitl defense of the truth except in uncompromising
resistance to the beginnings of error ; to parley is to be defeated.
The steps in the "down-grade" progress are gentle, and slide
easily one into the other, but the sure end of the descent is none
the less fatal. He who yields the first step so complicates his
subsequent resistance as to insure his defeat. There is but one
safe position for the sacramental host: to stand on the whole
Scripture, and refuse to concede a single point.

ANTI-BIBLICAL THEOEIES OF RIGHTS. 521

As to the secular and political doctrines which involve the
points of assault upon the rule of faith, the church's true posi-
tion is wholly defensive. She has no secular institutions, good
or bad, to advocate as her ecclesiastical mission. That is sim-
ply and solely to deliver the whole revealed will of God for
man's salvation. She has no spiritual power to make anything
sin, or anything duty, which the Bible has not made such. But
if she would not walk into the fatal ambuscades of the enemies
of Scripture, she must have a clear and exact perception of the
extent of this defensive duty. When encroachers tisurp spirit-
ual authority to lay upon the consciences of Christians any extra-
scriptural doctrine or requirement, they thereby make that en-
croachment a part of their ecclesiastical code. And they thus
make it the right and duty of the friends of truth, in the exer-
cise of their spiritual and ecclesiastical power, to examine and
reject such new doctrine claiming to be spiritual and ecclesias-
tical. The friends of truth are to do this, not in order to en-
croach upon, but to protect, liberty of conscience in God's chil-
dren. Failing to understand this part of their defensive duty,
they betray the cause entrusted to them to the cunning aggres-
sion.

It is the fashion to say that the metes and bounds between
the kingdoms of Christ and of Cresar have always been, and
must continue to be, very undefined and vague. This I utterly
deny. They have, indeed, been constantly overstepped, but
this is because there have always been churchmen greedy of
power, worldly-minded and dictatorial. Men demand of us that
we shall draw an exact dividing line between the two jurisdic-
tions, defining everywhere the points at which they meet. The
demand is preposterous, because the two kingdoms are not
spread upon one plane, but occupy different spheres. There is
no zigzag mathematical line to be drawn in such a case, but
the clear space separating the two spheres is all the more easy
to be seen by honest eyes. It is pretended that there is great
room for debate between fair constructions of the famous rule
that church synods must handle and determine nothing except
what is ecclesiastical. I am sure the wise men who stated it
saw no room at all for such debate. I remember that when
they selected these words for their rule, they had also declared

522 ANTI-BIBLICAL THEORIES OF RIGHTS.

that Holy Scripture was the sufficient and sole statute-book of
Christ's ecclesia. Hence, their rule means plainly that church
synods must handle and determine just what Holy Scripture de-
termines, and nothing else ; and they must determine what they
handle precisely as Scripture does. Is not that distinct enough?
Or, if any one seeks further definition, it may be found very sim-
ply in this direction. Let us premise first, that whatever is ex-
pressly set down in Scripture, and whatever follows therefrom
by good and necessary consequence, are binding on the Chris-
tian conscience. Now, all possible human actions must fall in
one of these three classes : (1,) Actions which Scripture posi-
tively enjoins; (2,) Actions which Scripture positively forbids;
(3,) Actions which Scripture leaves indifferent. In the. first
case, church courts are to enjoin all that God enjoins, and no-
thing else, and because he enjoins it. In the second case, they
are to prohibit what he prohibits, and on the ground of his au-
thority. In the third case, they are to leave the actions of his
people free to be determined by each one's own prudence and
liberty, and this because God has left them free.

MOl^ISM.^

MONISTS postulate tlie doctrine, tliat tlie result of a true
jihilosopliy ought to be to unify the whole system of hu-
man thought, by ultimately resolving all the multiplicity and
diversity of beings into one single substance, and all effects into
the power of its single energy. They think this true, real being
a Mo'yo:;, and the whole universe of spirit and matter, in its
realit}', an absolute monad : duality even, of real being, they
cannot be reconciled to ; plurality of distinct powers, they think
unphilosophical. Hence it must be true, somehow, that either
the multiplicity and diversity must be only apparent; or these
beings must be only apparent, or else modal and temporary
manifestations of the one absolute Being. The highest problem
of all monistic sjstems is to make this resolution of the many
into the One by some speculation. On this we remark :

1. The monistic tendency has been, in fact, widely influential
in philosophy for tAvo thousand four hundred years. It was the
animating principle of tlie Eleatic school five hundred years be-
fore Christ. Zenophanes, announcing the unity of deity, also
denied that real being could either begin to be or cease to be.
This central doctrine obviously imposed on his school the task
of either accounting for temporal and changing beings as modal
manifestations of the one, eternal substance, or with his suc-
cessor Zeno, denying flatly that temporal and differing things
had any true being or were anything more than delusions ; or,
with Heraclitus of resolving all, both the absolute One, and the
temporal many, into one stream of endless becomings and end-
ings.

Plato's later metaphysics, after he had refined away from the
sober, Socratic influence, unfolded strong monistic tendencies.

' A lecture delivered before the American Association of Christian Philosophy
at University Place, New York City.

523

524 MONISM.

He went ever nearer to the ideal scheme of resolving the being
of God, the eternal Toop, into idea; and matter, as well as finite
mind, into the emanations of the eternal ideas. When we pass to
modern philosophy, the pantheistic scheme of Spinoza reappears
as rigid and complete monism. Its main postulates are, that
only eternal and necessary Being can be real ; that its actual be-
ginning in time, ex yiiJiilo, is imjDOSsible ; that absolute and neces-
sary Being can be but One ; that hence, all seeming individual,
temporal, and differing beings, must be but modal manifestations
of the eternal One; and that we must accept this explanation
even as to phenomenal entities so opposite as mind and matter,
good and evil, virtue and vice.

German idealism in all its jDhases, from Fichte, through
Schelling, Hegel, Schleiermacher, Schopenhauer, to Hartmann,
glories in being Monist, and disdains all systems which do not
tend to this result. Its whole effort is, under one scheme or
another, to identify the world of thought known in subjective
consciousness, the world known as objective and the eternal
mind as one. To this day after all the hopeless self-contradic-
tions and mutually destructive refutations of these schools, pub-
lishing their own futility, we see the monistic tendency capti-
vating the larger part of German philosophy, and disposing its
authors to deny the name of true philosophers to all who refuse
to speculate for the monist result, even when the names are as
illustrious as those of Beid, Joufii'oy, Hamilton, Cousin and
McCosh.

Perhaps the most surprising evidence of the pertinacity of
the tendency is that seen in the materialistic philosophy, so
called, of our own age, from Hartley and Priestley, to H. Spencer.
Auguste Comte's positive philosophy is a stark attempt to estab-
lish monism, by reducing all science and philosophy and the-
ology at once, to the science of sensible j^benomena and their
physical laws. Instead of seeking, with the idealists, to merge
the objective world into subjective thought, he attempts the
opposite : to reduce all thought to physical energy. Plerbert
Spencer, discarding both spmt and God, attempts to construct
his whole universe of mind and nature out of matter eternally
existent, and material force eternally persistent. He asserts the
very essence of monism ^vith the sharpest dogmatism, declaring

MONISM. 525

tliat our system of tliouglit cannot liave any pretension to be
a pliilosoplay until it lias explained every being and every
effect in the universe as tlie outcome of one substance and one
force.

2. We will now place ourselves in the monist's point of view,
and endeavor to represent fairly whatever seems to him specious or
plausible in favor of his conclusion. He urges that the function
of philosophy is to unify thought. The rudiments of cognitions
are given to the unscientific mind in the form of individual, suc-
cessive, diverse, or even discordant percepts. The business of
the science of mind is to explain and so to unify these into
sj'stem ; to show how they compose one whole of thought. Thus :
the forming of a simple judgment in the understanding is a unify-
ing act of thought, it places one subject and one predicate in
the unity of a single affirmation in thought. Again, what is the
mind's act in forming a concept or general idea of a class? By
comparing acts it collects individual objects made known to it
in perception, which have agreeing marks or attributes, into a
single cognition, which represents the common marks of all.
The concept is thus a unification of many into a more complete
one. So, the logical process of proof (by syllogism) also pur-
sues this unification in thought, continually bringing the lower
and more diverse and numerous propositions in the conclusions
under the logical control of the fewer and higher premises, until
all are unified under the primitive judgments of the reason.
The old realist theory of general ideas, again, reigned nearly
unquestioned from Plato to Koscelin ; that in every concept there
must be besides the individuals denoted by the class name, an
e)U! reale, either ante res individfias, or in rehus connoted by that
term. Now add the undisputed rule of the logicians : that in-
tension of concepts varies inversely with their extension ; that
as the larger genus includes more individuals than any one of
its species, it expresses fewer of those attributes which differen-
tiate species and genera from one another. Hence, at the top
of the generalizing process there must be a sumvium gemis, in-
cluding in its concept all individual beings of all genera and
species, but connoting onl}- the one attribute of existence. Then
ought there not to be, answering to this sinmmon gentis, an ens
realissimxwi, i?i rebus and also in this case, ante res? Is not

526 MONISM.

this monism? Does not this show us the whole peripatetic
scheme tending to that cidmination ?

Once more, it was the glory of the metaph3^sical thought of
Greece that in spite of the prevalent polytheism of the myths
and poets their philosophy led them up to monotheism. Zeno-
phaues, Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Plotinus, were monotheists;
they correctly unified their thought by tracing the whole cosmos
of effects to a single divine, absolute Cause, as to their efficient
source. Should they not have completed the process of unifica-
tion by tracing all phenomenal being up to the one absolute Sub-
stance ? This is what monism is attempting to complete. When
all the better part of Greek philosophy became Christian, the
attempt of all the better divines to combine the doctrine of the
Trinity with monotheism resulted in "Monarchianism." The
personality of the Word and Spirit was acknowledged, but the
person of the Father was held forth as Movr^Apxr^, the substantive
source of the other two persons whom he perpetually and eter-
nally emits from himself by a process of self-differentiation.
Why should we not extend this genesis to all other individual
beings ?

Finally, consistent unity throughout must be the characteristic
of any system of truths. Hence, since philosophy should aim
to systematize all the spheres of truth, it should seek their unity
in an alisolute monism. Such is the plea ; let us now examine
its validity. Our position is, that these affirmative arguments
are only specious, and that the theory is as erroneous as it is
hurtful to sound thought and philosophy.

3. Monism is to be rejected, because, [a.) Its inevitable corol-
lary must be either atheism or pantheism. If there is no being
that is real in the universe, except the One, the absolute Being ;
if all phenomenal beings are but Diodl suhslstendl of this one,
then it must include God along with all creatures (so called) in
substantive oneness. Only by saying there is no God, can this
rigid conclusion be avoided. It is not said that every monist
has avowed either, or that all of them have seen clearly whither
their speculation will lead them. It is not forgotten that even
a Hegel deemed he could honestly conform to the Lutheran
Church. But none the less is the corollary as unavoidable as it
is simple.

MONISM. 527

The power of the practical tendency is seen in such facts as
these : that most monists, Greek and modern, have been pan-
theists; that Spinoza's, the most perspicuous and exact of all
systems of monism, was as rigidly pantheistic ; that when the
amiable Sclileiermacher had once been imbued with Hegel's
monism, his plan of Christianity at once sunk to a pan-Chris-
tism, or baptized pantheism.

Xow, therefore, every argument against atheism or panthe-
ism is an argument against monism. Against either scheme the
objections «re numerous and momentous. Pantheism is prac-
tical atheism.

(b.) Monistic speculations are obviously the results of an
over-eager craving for simplification. But this tendency has
ever been the snare and plague of science, the mother of loose
hypotheses, the unwholesome excitant of the scientific imagina-
tion, the tempter to false analyses and hasty inductions. In
this case, it has prompted the monist to assume far more than
his premises authorize. It is perfectly true, for instance, that
all truths should be interconsistent ; and that, so far as the hu-
man mind has grasp to see their relations, a correct system of
truths will make them appear so. But it has never been proved
that they must all express attributes of one single substance, or
laws of one single force, in order to be interconsistent. The
laws of two distinct spheres of being cannot lack harmony with
each other merely because distinct ; all that is requisite here is
that they do not positively clash. But especially is this to he
pondered : that the providential control of the One Almighty
over both the departments of being, material and spiritual, is
all that is needed to unify their laws, and insure harmony to
their interactions. Hence, it is proven, there is no need to pre-
dicate anything more than this supreme providence to insure
full harmony of truth in the philosophy which attempts to ex-
plain the universe. The all-controlling will of the One God
gives all the monism true thought requires.

(c.) The place, time and manner in which monists set up their
darling principle stamp their proceeding as more fatally un-
scientific. From the Eleatics to the modern idealists, they tak&
up the monistic hypothesis as a first postulate at the begin-
ning, instead of a final induction or conclusion at the end>

528 MONISM.

Thus, tlie former begin tlieir yery first construction by postulat-
ing that real existence cannot be beginning existence or ending
existence. Spinoza places as his first proposition the assertion
that true substance must ineyitably be absolute and unbegin-
ning. Later and more idealistic pantheists all Tirtually set out
with the postulate that the objectire must be reduced to the
subjective, whether facts permit it or not, as the recent materi-
alists all begin, with equal imperiousness, by resohing that
the subjective shall be merged in the objective.

But surely it is time philosophy had learned the lesson of
true induction, that science should obey its facts instead of dic-
tating them! Mental science is just as much a science of ob-
servation as physical, only its facts are to be observed in the
field of consciousness, instead of the outer material world.
These facts of consciousness are to be carefully and impartially
watched, compared, noted in many agreeing instances, and veri-
fied, until we are certain we have the generic facts of man's mental
nature, and not some irregular exceptions ; just as the astrono-
mer, the chemist, the botanist, estabhshes his facts of the stars,
the molecules, and the flowers. Then has philosophy data, and
then only ; data from which she can proceed to construct mental
science. It is very true that these data of mental facts will in-
clude more than the mere sensationaHst allows, sense-percep-
tions and their coUigations; they will include primitive judg-
ments of universal, necessarj- truth. But the claim of every
proposition to be ranked among these must be tested by the in-
fallible criteria of primariness, universality, and necessity. Only
then can they take their places as unquestioned tmths. The
hcense of the monists may be best seen by supposing that some
other science had presumed to proceed in this way. Let us
suppose, for example, that chemistry had resolved to be monis-
tic in spite of nature's facts; that, fascinated by love of hypo-
thesis and the seductions of a false simphfication, she had be-
gun thus : Since God is one, I will suppose, as of course, that
matter, which is the creative effluence of his eternal unit-thought
and power, must be one also ; that so perfect a cause could not
have been so inconsistent as to create any matter inferior in its
essence to the most perfect; that science must unify itself;
and chemistry is not truly unified until she holds all apparently

MONISM. 529

different masses of matter to be only modifications of one origi-
nal simple substance, and all its molecular changes mere varia-
tions of one and tlie same force. So this chemist proceeds to
say: Lead is gold, and sulphur is a modification of gold, and
iron is also a phase of gold ; for my science shall have but one
simple substance at its soiu'co. It will not matter to him that
no mortal has ever seen sidphur or iron transmuted out of gold
or into gold. It will give him no pause that after the final analy-
ses of the crucible, the menstruum, and the galvanic current,
after the most refined and almost spiritual tests of the spectro-
scope, the iron and sulphur appear as obstinately ultimate and
simple and separate substances as the gold itself. It does not
matter to him ; he will hold his monistic fancy in spite of facts,
or the total absence of facts. There shall be but one ultimate
substance of matter, so he postulates. What v/ould have been
the scientific worth of such a chemistry? History answers: It
could give us the silly dreams of alchemy. It could befool gen-
erations of patient students into the worthless search for the
"powder of projection," which should transmute lead into gold.
But the modern chemistry which has endowed civilized man
with his amazing power over nature has proceeded in exactly
the opposite way: by humility, not by dogmatism; by asking
nature for her facts, and listening meekly for her answers, in-
stead of dictating what they shall be, in order that they may
gratify a love of imaginary symmetry. Thus our true science,
instead of a material monism, has given us sixty-four simple
substances, each irreducible into the other. Why did One First
Cause make so many? True science answers that she does not
know. Her modest, but beneficent, province is not to solve
captious questions of this kind.

So, a true philosophy must accept the facts given by nature,
in the sphere of consciousness and observation, and must follow
those facts whithersoever they logically lead, if this be to a dual-
ism of matter and spirit, instead of trying to distort the facts to
suit a preconceived postulate. Philosophy must not stumble at
mysteries, but only at contradictions ; for every one of her lines
of light leads out to some point in the dark circumference of
mystery.

((I.) Here it is claimed is the fatal defect of all monistic

Vol. m. — 34.

530 MONISM.

schemes : thej disclose hopeless contradictions of our necessary
laws of thought and truths of experience, as their inevitable
corollaries. Thus Spinoza, having assumed that all real exis-
tence must be absolute existence, and therefore one is obliged
to teach that modes of extension and modes of thought can both
qualify and at the same time be the /7av; and thus, that phe-
nomenal beings as real and true to our experience as any a jjrlori
cognition, or as this very Uav itself, are both modes of the One,
although a pai-t of them are qualified by size, figiire, ponderosity,
impenetrability, color ; and the other pai-t universally and utterly
lack every one of these qualities, and are qualified by thought,
sensibility, desire, spontaneity, and self-action. But this is not
a mystery, it is a self-contradiction. The quahties of matter and
extension cannot be relevant to spirit, nor those of thought, feel-
ing, and volition to matter. They utterly exclude each other.
Descartes was right : the common sense of mankind is right in
thus judging. The proof is that just so soon as we attempt to
ascribe intelligence and will to matter, or quahties of extension
to spirit, utterly absurd and impossible fancies are asserted.

Spinoza teaches us that the Absolute Being must inevitably
have an immutable sameness and necessity of being so strict as
to necessitate its absolute unity. Yet he has to teach, in order
to carry out this monism, that this monad exists, at the same
instant of time, not only in numberless diversities of mode, but
in iitterly opposite modes, as for instance, as soHd, liquid and
gaseous at the same instant. All that science teaches us is,
that modes may siicceedeach other in the same matter, as when
a given mass of H" O exists, first as ice, afterwards as water,
and after that as vapor or steam. Or, worse yet, that this One so
necessary, eternal and absolute in its unity, may at the same
moment of time, hate a Frenchman and love a Frenchman in
the two modal manifestations of German and Gaul, and may
hate sin and love the same sin in the two manifestations, at the
same moment, of good souls and bad souls! Tet this same
Spinoza could not admit that infinite, eternal power and ^\dsdom
can make a beginning of real being objective to itself. Truly,
this is "straining out the goat and swallowing the camel."

Or, if we pass to the more recent forms of monism, we find
them all from Fichte to Hartmann, recognizing the necessity for

MONISM. 531

tlieir theory of reducing all our objective modifications of soul
to the subjective by some shadowy process of " return upon
itself," or self-limitation. The two parts of consciousness are
iiTeducible. No better practical proof of this need be asked
than that each successive attempt has been a hopeless failure.
"Who — what monist even — is now satisfied with Fichte's plan for
such reduction ? or with Schelling's ? or with Hegel's ? or with
Schopenhauers ? or with Schleiermacher's? or with Hartmann's ?
The writer was personally assured by Hermann Lotze before
his death that Schleiermacherism was vanishing out of Ger-
man philosophy and "would leave no results whatever." In-
deed the scheme of the latter, viewed aright, is a confession
that to reduce all objective mental modifications to the subjective
o^igld to Ijc for philosophy an impossible task. For in order to
attempt the task after the failures of his predecessors, he i&
fain to make this process a function of unconsciousness! It is
effected before the absolute comes to consciousness, and in order
that it may come to consciousness. But philosophy should be
the science of consciousness. We are required to beheve that
the phenomenal universe, everywhere teeming with thought,
knowledge, conscious, intelligent will, is the result of ]3rocesses
in a Thing, which knew nothing, yet filled a universe with know-
ledge. But this desperate final resort of Hartmann suggests the
simple proof that the reduction attempted is impossible. Thus,
the most palpable and impressive conviction human minds have
of the reality of objective things is that gained when we know
them as limiting our ot\ti volitions, or as affecting us with con-
scious impressions when we know we did not produce these
by our vohtion. A scribe moves his hand briskly ; it is
stopped by the edge of the desk, and that sharply enough to
produce some pain. Now, he is conscious that he did produce
that motion of his hand by his o-^-n subjective volition. He is
equally conscious that he did not produce the solid obstruction
and the pain by his o^vu subjective volition. If he does not cer-
tainly know these two facts, he knows no content of conscious-
ness whatever. Even Hegel's staining point for a philosophy is
gone.

Aijain, men must think their own volitions the most clear and
definite function of their selfhood, the most certainly subjective

532 MONISM.

of all tliclr subjectivities. Wlien tliej are distinctly conscious
of modifications of mind not self-jyroduced, they consequently
liave here the most positive evidence of the not-self. It is easy
to sec how the ideal monist will be inchned to answer when we
jjress him with the question : How is it that we are unconscious
of this process of reduction by which the not-me identifies itself
with the me, if it really takes j^lace in thought? His escape
must be to remind us of that doctrine of Leibnitz, endorsed by
Sir William Hamilton, that there may be some modifications
of thought out of consciousness, or back of it. But, first, the
only instances of such unconscious j)i'ocesses ever verified by
psychology are merely of those inchoate risings of relations be-
tween cognitions, which are in order to definite cognitions — as,
for instance, the unthought ties of suggestion which influence
the rise of associated ideas into conscious thought — which them-
selves never become explicit judgments; and second, that it is
the very nature of rational volition that it must be conscious ; if
not conscious, it is nothing. But it has been sho-s\Ti how it is
chiefly the presence and absence of conscious volitions which
demonstrate to us the reality of the not-me and its distinctness
from the me.

(e.) But there is one intuitive judgment so uniformly disre-
garded by all monists, that it deserves to be signahzed apart.
This is the necessary judgment that action must imply an agent,
as qualities imply an underlying substance. And hence com-
mon sense declares that a series of actions or functions of a
substance cannot constitute the being of that substance. It must
exist as substance, in order to act, or have processes take place.
To this rule the intuitive common sense of all the world bears
witness. When they see an action, they know there must be an
agent, and that the agent is something substantive, not identical
with its acts, but the source of them. The whole scientific mind
of the world proceeds on the same intuitive belief. Physical
action must imply physical agents. The series of actions science
always regards as not identical with the agents, but as proceed-
ing from them. When the theory was surrendered, for instance,
that electricity is a fluid sliding over the surface of electrical
bodies, it followed that the whole scientific mind of the world
demanded the conclusion that it is a molecular energy of some

MONISM. 533

substance — possibly an uukowu one. TvTien t.io undulatory
theory of liglit was adopted, the scientific mind of the world at
once adopted as the necessary consequence the existence of an
ether filling all the interstellar spaces, and even transparent flu-
ids and solids. For why? Has the ether ever been touched,
seen, weighed, smelt? No. But the necessary law of the reason
compels men to believe that if there are undulations, there must
be soiaething to undulate, and that the mere action cannot actu-
ally constitute the being of this thing.

But this simple dictum of necessary truth mouists con-
stantly discard. It seems to cost them no effort to go in
express opposition to this ine^dtable judgment. For instance,
Herachtus thinks that the mere act of becoming may constitute
the being of the most permanent and substantive things in the
universe, rocks, planets, indi^ddual souls, God himself. Plato
when leaning to ideahsm, thinks that somehow, blrj itself, deemed
by all other Greek schools an eternal, self-existent substance,
may be only an eternal emanation of the One : being constituted,
namely, of his archetypal thought. That is, a mere function of
a spiritual substance may actually be a material substance.
Platonic realists find the generic lies only in the general con-
cepts which God thinks; and j'et believe one of these "gene-
rals," while a true thing, truer indeed than any individual of the
genus, exists cmte res individuas. This delusion coTild only be
made possible by the absurdity we combat. When we come to
modern monists we find Spinoza attempting to account for all
finite substantive things as mere modes of development — func-
tional acts of the absolute Thing To //«v. So German idealists
propose, one way or another, to construct all substantive spirits,
including God, out of a series of acts of consciousness. They
would fain have us beHeve that the solid rock, deep down in the
mountain, has its being actuaUy constituted of the self -limitation
of some consciousness somewhere.

The theory only makes its first pretended movement by defying
the common sense of mankind. PossiKy a poor excuse might
be found for this utter blunder in the case of the Greeks, in
the fact that their nomenclature was vacfue. It made Obaia
stand for being or entity, nature and substance. But men had
no excuse after the Latin had so exactly defined the difference

534 MONISM.

"between mere esse, essentia, and substantia. An act lias esse^
or e»titj, Y.'liile going on. But it is an opposite kind of entity
from substance.

In favor of monism there is left, tlien, onl^'tlie craving for exces-
sive simplification, and the repugnance to the mystery of the origin
of contingent beings. Against it stand the fatal contradictions to
necessary intuitions and real facts of experience. !}.lonism asks :
How does even an infinite agent produce an actual beginning of
real beings ex nihilo f Sound philosophy must answer : It does
not know; it cannot explain that action to human comprehen-
sion. But sound philosophy can show that this is no objection,
l^ecause it can be proved that such explanation lies beyond the
conditions of human knowledge. Those conditions understood,
we see that we had no right to expect to be able to comprehend
the beginning e:c nihilo of contingent being, nor to stumble at
the fact. The human mind is equally incompetent to see how
the wonder was ^Touglit by omnipotence, and to say he could
not work it. If the fact that he did work it is proven a pode-
riori, or testified by his own word, sound reason acquiesces in
the fact unexjDlained.

For what are the Hmits and conditions of human knowledge ?
We will not say -svith the sensationahsts, that they are simply
the limits of sense-perceptions and their combinations in mem-
ory and association. We hold as firmly as any transcendental-
ist, that there are also certain primitive judgments and intuitive
abstract notions in the reason, not collected from sense-percep-
tions and experience by any mere process of generalization, or
I)y any deduction, but rather the conditions a jy^ioi'i for formu-
lating all valid perceptions and deductions. But while these
rational first cognitions are not causally derived from sense-per-
ceptions, they can find their occasions noichere save in sense-per-
ceptions. This is the vital truth established by Locke amidst
so many half-truths and errors. For instance : The mind can
never have derived its abstract notion of power in cause, and its
intuitive behef that every beginning phenomenon must have its
own efficient cause, from watching a phenomenon foUow its
antecedent. But none the less, the mind would never have
enounced this judgment and notion to itself, had it not seen in-
stances of effects, either by the consciousness or the bodily senses.

MONISM. 535

Thus, even these highest and regnlatiye truths, white not expe-
riential in their evidence, are conditioned on experience for their
Joccasions.

Is not this a fair inference, that our competency to judge the
metes and bounds of a causal power must be hmited to cases
within man's experience ? But of actual beginnings of contingent
existence, either material or spii'itual, man has no experience
and no observation ; and he can have none. Not of any material
beginning, since physics teaches us that every atom of matter was
already existing before man appeared in the universe, and that
all seeming beginnings of masses or bodies have been merely
the collecting and joining or organizing of atoms already existing;
not of any spiritual contingent Being, since sense-perception
teaches us nothing direct concerning spirits that are immaterial,
but they are directly known only in consciousness. But consci-
ousness is the subjective faculty. Now, no soul can ever know
or realize by consciousness its own beginning, because it must
already have begun to be in order to have consciousness ; nor its
own ending, because in the ending of its being would be the ex-
tinction of consciousness. It is only the Mind which never be-
gan and can never end, the Eternal, Self -existent One, which can
by any possibility construe to itself finite beginnings and endings.

We say to the monist, then : Pause ; both you and we are out
of oiu' depth ; we are in a region of ontology where we can safely
neither affirm, nor deny, nor comprehend, nor explain. Let us
lay our hands upon our mouths. The conclusion of the matter
is to confess with the apostle (Hebrews xi. 3), that the doctrine
of the beginning of contingent being is one of faith, not of phil-
osophy : fliartc iyoo~Jnev •/.azr^pziadai zoh^ auoi^a^ p-^/iazi dedo ec^ to
fiTj ix cc.r^oaiyar^ zd 6h~ous'ja Yeyouivac. And here is strong evi-
dence of his acqiiaintance -^dth the whole range of speculative
human thought. He says at once to the Pythagorean, the Ele-
atic, the atomist, the Platonist, the Stagyrite: Yain men, you
are out of your depth. The same inspired caution is as good
for Sfjinoza and the most modern idealist or monist.

THE FACULTY DISCOURSE/

Young Ladies and Gentleman :

ONE year ago it was your good fortune to be instructed in
the importance of moral and mental honesty by one whose
whole private and public life has been an incorporate example
of his noble theme.^ You saw, indeed, the frame once so in-
stinct with vigor and nerve whenever the call of dutv and danger
inspired him, now bent under the premature weight of years and
unrewarded toils; you heard the voice which could once ring
like the clarion in the forefront of battle, unstrung by soitow
and lassitude. But you beheld the manly spirit disdaining at
once the infirmities of the flesh and the depression of defeat,
glowing as strongly and brightly as in the days of his prime.
You should account it one of the richest boons of providence to
your youth, that you had the jprivilege of hearing him bear his
witness to the supreme claim and worth of honor and truth.
The heart that can swell wdth generous applause at such a
career, and with eager aspiration to imitate it, is ennobled by its
emotions and instructs itself more grandly than the pen or tongue
of the writer can teach it. I know well, that no words I shall
utter will carry the endorsement of such a heroic life, yet the
momentous importance of his theme justifies me in renewing it
in another of its aspects.

There are truths so fundamental to the welfare of mankind,
that they cannot grow trite, as there are names of such immortal
glory that it can never be commonplace to cite their authority.
Such a name is Washington's and such a truth is the one I now
quote from his valedictory letter to the American people.

" Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political
prosperity, religion and morahty, are indispensable supports.

' A discourse at the Commencement of the University of Texas, 1889. Deliv-
ered by appointment of the faculty to the students.
' Lieutenant General D. H. Hill.

536

THE FACULTY DISCOTJESE. 53T

In vain would tliat man claim the attribute of patriotism, wha
should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness,
these foremost props of the duties of men and citizens. The
mere politician equally with the pious man ought to respect and
cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections
with private and public felicity. . . . Let us with caution in-
dulge the supposition that morality can be sustained without
religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined
education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience
both forbid us to expect that national morality can j^revail in
exclusion of religious principles. It is substantially true, that
virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government."

This thesis I might substantiate by several arguments, begin-
ning with the one advanced by " the father of his country." If the
reverence be lost which should hedge the inviolable sanctity of
oaths, what defence have we left, for either good name, property
or life when these are drawn into the courts of justice ? If pro-
bity and tliG righteous fear of the judge of all the earth be lost,
we have no longer a guarantee for the integrity of our magis-
trates or the fidelity of the executors of the laws. It has been
well argued that mutual confidence is the cement of society and
of the commerce of men in their affairs, but for this confidence
there is no basis but integrity and fidelity. It is these qualities
which inspire the industry, the frugality and the order whence
flow the wealth, numbers and strength of the commonwealth.
Virtue is the only foundation of the family and the only guide
in the rearing of the young for future citizenship.

But it is not necessary to pursue the demonstration. The
most conclusive proof may be seen in the fate of two contrasted
societies ; such, for instance, as the commonwealth of the
Kiowas or Comanches in America, with either of the cantons of
Protestant Switzerland. Why is the former ill-housed, ill-clad,
half-starved, miserable, and pauperized, and tending toward an
ignoble extinction ? Yet tlieir goodly heritage was in the fertile
prau'ies and under the genial skies of this Texas, while the latter
inheriting a narrow and stony territory under a rude sky, and
iron bound by the savage Alps, has had for centuries a history
of happiness, plenty and power with the promise of indefinite
prosperity hereafter. Because the Swiss are Christians and

538 THE FACULTY DISCOURSE.

moral ; wliile the savao;es were pagan and %dcious. Because the
well grounded apprehension of wicked aggressions suppressed
all the beneficent exertions of their natural aspirations, and left
them to indolence, violence, systematic theft, and the neglect
of domestic duties. The source of savagery is sin. The same
vice will in time sink any prosperous, civilized society into the
same despicable misery. 'We may be reminded that these sav-
ages retain along with their vices, certain virtues, fortitude,
bravery, and loyalty to engagements of their plighted faith to
friends; that in this last quality they set an example which
many more civilized men would do well to imitate. These
praises so far as they are just, only confirm our conclusion, so
ruinous are bad morals to men's sociai welfare, an utter desertion
of such virtues would make even existence impossible. Some
virtues must be maintained by self-interest even to furnish the
conditions for the gregariousness of the savages. Should these
also be discarded, their absence would SjDeedily bring the end of
their misery and their existence.

But I do not propose to argue formally what no one will
avowedly dispute. I propose rather to explain and enforce.
And, first, I must beg you to beware of inferring from my
urgency in asserting civic and personal morality as all essential
means for free government and social welfare, that this is the sole
ground of moral obligation. The maxim, that " Honesty is the
best poUcy," has been repeated so often, there is ground to fear
many have concluded that the goodness of the policy is what
makes the honesty. When once this grovelling conception is
adoj^ted, there is a speedy and fatal end, both of the formal
correctness of action promoted by this reasoning of expediency,
and of all true inward moral principles and desert. The quality
of the action is decided exclusively b}' the complexion of its
inward motive, fie who has done the thing right in form, not
supremely because it is right, but because it is politic, has no
virtue in that act; all the credit he can claim is that of shrewd-
ness and regulated selfishness. Not until the sentiment of duty
for its own sake and from reverence for the all j^erfect God, in
whose holiness virtue is impersonated in its perfect beauty,
becomes the ruling motive of our acts, do virtues even begin in
us. Nor will the doctrine of expediency long suffice to retain

THE FACULTY DISCOUESE. 539

€ven the dead and soulless image of it in the outward conduct.
All our observation tells us that soon after honesty comes to be
valued for the goodness of its policy, the same politic calciila-
tions begin to impel men to all dishonesties. The explanation
and reason ought to be very patent.

The internal motive of these morals of expediency is, after
all, nothing else than selfishness, refined and regulated. But
selfishness -when dominant is sinful, the fruitful mother of
every kind of sin, injustice, envy, cruelty and oppression. Can
one cast out devils through Beelzebub, the prince of de^^ls ?
Nay, verily; the parent chief will only propagate and cherish
his own kind. In vain will you plead with an intellect per-
verted and darkened by this passion of selfishness, that he
ought to see even the most self-denying act of equity apparently
most damaging to self-interest will yet result in the final, and
broadest experience in advantage to self. This is truth ; such a
truth as the infinite, beneficent, and unselfish intelligence of God
can see clearly and can delight in. But it is one which your
selfish, politic mind, will not and cannot beheve in. Such a
mind concludes thus, under subtile and forcible temptations:
" Yes ! of course, honesty is ahvays the best policy for other peo-
ple to pursue towards me, and frequently for me towards them.
But this dishonesty will be my best policy now ; for my superior
.shrewdness will enable me to reap the benefit of it, without the
bad consequences it might entail on more bungling hands."
Thus under this false philosophy each man advises and expects
his fellow to pursue the good policy of honest li^ang, while each
one secretly proposes to depart from it for his own advantage.
The whole company sink into hypocrisy and moral iDutres-
cence.

If this discourse, young gentlemen, is to be worth any more to
you than a decent and pretentious deceit, it must succeed in im-
pressing reason and conscience Avith the stern and inexorable
necessity of the highest and purest standard of civic morality
for citizens of all elective and free republics. Unless I succeed
in doing this, I shall have done nothing more than amuse or
weary you. Give me then, I pray you, your candid attention
to a few lines of thought of entire simplicity and obvious truth,
which I am about to present. While civil government is in its

540 THE FACULTY DISCOURSE.

highest aspect the ordinance of our Maker for our good and his
honor, on its human side it is to be viewed as a moral associa-
tion of equals formed for their common and equitable good.
The commonwealth is not entitled to engross to itseK aU rights
or to claim to be the source and dispenser of all privileges and
duties. Both the individual and family are before the common-
wealth. Thej exist and hold their rights not bj its authority or
sufferance, but b}' the direct authority and gift of the God who
created both them and it. The commonwealth exists for the
good of the families, not these for its behoof. The servant shall
not be above his master. It is, then, only a part of the func-
tions of social life which pertain to the commonwealth to be
exercised or decided by it. But as to these, its legitimate
functions and powers, the citizens hold to each other the moral
relation of a great co-partnery. A part of their heritage of
powers they have cast in as subscribers to the common stock.
The one duty of this political firm or co-partnership and of each
of its partners in his pubUc actions, is to pursue the common
and equitable good of the firm, and that alone. It is on this
firm, as a whole, losses must fall. To the firm belong aU the
gains and profits of the common functions performed for it.
These gains are to be aU distributed among aU the co-f)artners
according to the equities of the compact which created the co-
pai-tnership. Each partner is honorably free to employ the time,
efibrt, and capital which he did not subscribe to the firm, and
which remain individually his own, for the private behoof of him-
self and family.

But if he uses the name, credit, or capital of the firm for pri-
vate ends, as for ventures of which the losses will be thrown on
the firm and the gains conveyed to his own indi^ddual pocket,
he is a swindler. The dishonesty is so patent that a court of
equity would legally enjoin it, and give relief to his defrauded
partners. The whole community of merchants would concur in
" sending him to Coventry." He would take his proper place,
in their estimation, as a virtual thief.

No other rule of honesty can be found for the citizen in aU his
public or ci^dc acts, as a member of the great pohtical co-part-
nership of the commonwealth in voting, legislating, buying and
selling with the State and the performance of stipulated official

THE FACULTY DISCOUESE. 541

duties. How, now, do the practices, prevalent in America, stand
this plain and recognized test ? "What shall be said of him who
aims to make his politics pay? Of him who demands, for what
the commonwealth needs to buy, more than the market-price
would enable him to extract from the private dealer ? Of him
who, at the polls or in a legislature, votes for a measure of class
privileges designed to rob his fellow-citizens for the benefit of
the class to which he belongs? Can any complication of these
measures of wrong-doing, and blindness of a corrupted public
sentiment, veil this moral obliquity from an honest mind ? Some
one may attempt to escape the condemnation by exclaiming:
" Oh ! this is a theory of civic virtue too abstract and puritanical
for a real world ! ! " This I deny, with emphasis. The assertion
combines a sophism and a direct historical falsehood, with an
insidt to their fellow-citizens. There are yet men, and public
men, who act up to this theory of civic obligation. Well is it
for America that there are, else our civilization would be
doomed to the destiny of the Comanche!

A Washington, a Jefferson, a Henry, a Madison, a Monroe
lived up to this standard, and ever disdained to adopt a lower
one. He who understands the history of the country knovv^s that
but for the confidence of the American people that their trusted
leaders held this standard, federal institutions would have been
impossible on this continent. Every other man can live up to
the same standard unless he deliberately prefers gain to prin-
ciple. But the deplorable prevalence of the lower standard of
civic morality which in the exactly parallel relations of a co-
partnership would stamp any man as a scoundrel, discloses a
principle of human nature, of jDrofound moment here.

This is the tendency to do wTong in associated, more readily
than in individual acts. The director of a business corporation
sanctions for the agents of the company, exactions and oppres-
sions which he would be ashamed to perpetrate personally on
his neighbor. The Puritan, who in his own household is a
stickler for Sabbath observance, is a well-pleased stockholder
in the lucrative railroad which tramples God's Sabbath law in
the dust with insolent boldness every week. The same delusion
misleads the public acts of nations. There is probably nowhere
a people which can count more persons of exalted dignity and

542 THE FACULTY DISCOUESE.

genuine piety among its members, or which is as generally
guided by honesty and truth as the English people. But this
was the nation which in its organic capacity, sought to monopo-
lize the African slave trade for nearly a hundred years, which
waged the two iniquitous opium wars in China, and is to-day,
by virtue of the triumj)h of its Christian arms, coining its Indian
revenue out of the crime and self-destruction and idiocy of the
Chinese people ; which in 1861, was too righteous to recognize
an independent Confederacy, entitled by its own international
law to recognition, because tainted with the sin of slave-holding,
and which yet had been eager in 1846 to recognize the republic
of Texas, tainted with the same sin, if she might thereby crip^^le
her rival, the United States.

This guilty hallucination concerning the veniality of associated
sins is easily explained. The "s-ictims of the wrong are out of
sight of the perpetrators, and do not obtrude their misery and
their reproaches with an inconvenient indiAaduality. The wrong-
doers can sin without directly soiling theu" own dainty fingers;
they get the wrongs perpetrated by the official hands of paid
agents, who can say they have themselves no responsibility.
The ■^Tong-doers imagine that responsibility and guilt are so
subdivided among the multitude that only an infinitesimal share
attaches to each one. This is, indeed, a very shallow delusion.
It has been long ago exploded by the wise man, when he said :
" Though hand join in hand, yet shall not the ^vicked go un-
pimished." This simple thought refutes it ; that if the supreme
judge once allowed this rule of subdi'S'ision, e^dl men would only
need to associate a sufficient number of accomplices in each
transgression in order to rob him of all practical control. Even
the plain and unrefined justice expressed in our criminal stat-
utes exposes the falsehood. By that law the guilt of a collective
concerted sin is not di"\dded, but multiplied. If twelve men con-
spire to murder one, the law makes twelve full murderers ; for
each is held such, as an accessory before the fact.

But none the less does this delusion everywhere cheat the
consciences of men. They flatter themselves that the guilt of
associated wrongs inflicted by the j^opular majority is venial, or
practically nothing.

As we combine these conclusions, they give us a deduction

THE FACULTY DISCOURSE. 543

concerning our topic as alarming as it is true. Its liigli stand-
ard of civic virtues is essential to the welfare of the state. Its
maintenance is also extremely difficult, and beset by peculiar
and subtle temptations. It is a quahty very hard to keep, and
easy to lose. But the people which loses it is ruined with a
most loathsome ruin.

The solemnity of this dilemma is fui'ther enhanced by another
social law Avhich I aim now to explain. T»^e have just seen that
it is natural to men to allow themselves far more moral Hcense
in their associated and pubhc acts than in their individual and
jDrivate. But, on the other hand, the example set by poHtical
parties and rulers, in those public acts in which they so easily
allow themselves immoral licenses, is the most powerful influ-
ence, forming, for good or evil, the moral character of the peo-
ple. Thus speaks Mr. Calhoun, in his precious Disquisition on
the Philosophy of Government, while contrasting the two theories
of popular or elective government :

"For of all the causes which conspire to form the character
of a people, those by which power, influence, and standing in
the government are most certainly and readily obtained are by
far the most powerful. These are the objects most eagerly
sought of all others by the talented and aspiring, and the pos-
session of which commands the greatest respect and admira-
tion. But just in proportion to this respect and admii'ation will
be their appreciation by those whose energy, intellect, and posi-
tion in society are calculated to exert the greatest influence in
forming the character of a people. If knowledge, wisdom, patri-
otism, and virtue be the most certain means of acquiring them,
these quahties will be most highly appreciated ; and this would
cause them to become prominent traits in the character of the
people. But if, on the contrary, cunning, fraud, treachery, and
party devotion be the most certain, they will be the most highly
prized, and will become marked features in their character. So
powerful, indeed, is the operation of the concurrent majority in
this respect, that if it were possible for a corrupt and degener-
ate community to establish and maintain a well-organized gov-
ernment of the kind, it would, of itself, piu'ify and regenerate
them ; while, on the other hand, a government based wholly on
the numerical majority would just as certainly corrupt and de-

544 THE FACULTY DISCOURSE.

base the most patriotic and virtuous people. So great is tlieir
influence in this respect, that just as the one or the other ele-
ment predominates in the construction of any government, in
the same proportion will the character of the government and
of the people rise or sink in the scale of patriotism and viiiue.
Neither religion nor education can counteract the strong tend-
ency of the numerical majority to corrupt and debase the
people."

Well did Thomas Fuller exclaim : " Oh, what a legislative
power hath the example of princes ! " Let the populace witness
the winning of the prizes, which most stimulate the desires, by
the arts of slander, sophism and bribery. Let them see the prac-
titioners of corruption and peculation crowned A\T.th wealth and
the applause of the crowds and even the flatteries of sycophantic
priests of rehgion. Let them have the examples of fraudulent
constructions and broken pledges set them by the supreme heads
of earthly authority ; and nothing can result from the principles of
imitation and ambition but a flood of vice which mil either cor-
rode and dissolve the foundations of free government, or sweep
them before the torrents of national convulsions.

There is another consideration which intensifies the lU'gency
of the peril. No human engine of moral degradation is so effec-
tive as the subjugation of a people formerly free. It unstrings
the moral character by dishonoring it, and taking away ruth-
lessl}' the " point of honor," around which self-respect and pride
are centered. By the burning resentments for the ^vrongs per-
petrated upon the conquered, it suggests the most seductive
temptations to adopt illicit methods of rehef or retaliation. It
subjects its victims to losses and miseries, which they can
neither resist by manly force nor endure without intolerable
sufferings. The escape from this cruel dilemma seems to be
found only in frauds. Hence chicanery has ever been the
weapon of the subjugated. It was doubtless this lesson, taught
by all history, which prompted our wise forefathers to prefer a
government of free consent, to one of force. But the artifices
and tricks by which the unhappy victims relieve themselves for
a time, from the wrongs they suffer, minister the succor at a
deadly cost — that of their own manhood and ci"\dc virtue. Un-
happily the illustration of this danger is too near at hand.

THE FACULTY DISCOUESE. 545

We have seen tlie peace, property and order of our common-
"wealths so imperiled by the changes in suffrage forced upon
these States, that the citizens saw no escape from ruin except in
those arts of the weak by which this suffrage might be illicitly
controlled. Even rehgious men justified these arts. They said
they were the only means left them to save their property, their
families, and even their lives from a fate as loathsome as threat-
ening, and society from anarchy. They pleaded that "necessity
knows no law." With the unfailing versatility and ability of
the southern character, they had often succeeded to the vexation
and disajDpointment of their rulers. Yes ! But they have also
succeeded in teaching themselves, their opponents and posterity
a lesson as fatal as anarchy ; the art and custom of debauching
the purity of elections. No statesman has ever doubted that
this custom, once established, must be the destruction of free
elective government. It poisons the stream of authority at its
fountain head. Will this art, first adopted under the supposed
stress of necessity, be laid aside when the necessity ends?
Alas, No! Neither by its inventors, nor by their opj)onents
thirsting and burning for retaliation. The recurring exigencies
of party contests will ever seem to the rivals another necessity,
justifying the resort to the same crooked weapons. Their pre-
vious use will appear to compel their further use. Will they
not be repeated until just government becomes a fiction ? Will
not white men learn to use these weapons against white oppo-
nents, appearing in their eyes as detestable and dangerous as
the negroes against whom they were first forged? One glance
at this question shows us that supreme fortitude, -v^dsdom and
j)urity would scarcely be sufficient to meet it. Will a conquered
and dispirited people exert these heroic qualities ?

The general aspect of our institutions and another illustration
of this burning question, is not sectional, but of continental dimen-
sions. This is the civil service reform which was to replace the
dangerous and corrupting " spoils system " of appointment to
office. A few years ago both parties which had previously
waged war on each other by means of this system, seemed to
concur in putting it aAvay. With the levity of party rivalry, they
challenged each other to concur in the much applauded reform ;
and sought to see which could out-grimace the other in affected

Vol. III.— 35.

546 THE FACULTY DISCOURSE.

zeal for it. Presidents uttered pious lioinilies upon tlie law and
promised its execution, " in a convenient season."

But, " can men drav*^ out leviatlian with a liook ? or his
tongue with a cord which they let down? Canst thou put a
hook into his nose? or bore his jaw through with a thorn ? Wilt
thou play with him as with a bird? or wilt thou bind him for
thy maidens"? The monster is not to be thus subdued. Let
us consider for a moment what means will be requisite for the
real and eifective introduction of the better system. There
needs to be a party, self-denying and virtuous enough, upon win-
ning an arduous and costly presidential campaign, to leave all
the offices, except those properly vacated for the unfaithfulness
of their incumbents, undisturbed in the hands of the existing
officers, and those officers poKtical opponents. For, let us sup-
pose that the winners should expel them, and seek to justify
theii'act by pleading that these occupants of office had come in as
spoilsmen, by partisan appointment, and that, therefore, the
seats of power must be cleansed of them before a jDermanent be-
ginning of the cleaner system could be made. Then on the next
turn of the wheel of political fortune, the opposite jDarty, now
new victors, would be sure to condemn that act as one of parti-
san greed, to be retaliated by another expulsion. Thus the true
reformer could never begin. Each party would be heard as now
jDrofessing loyalty to the principle, but postponing its real
application for another political revenge.

Is there a party, is there a body of citizens m this country,
rich and strong enough to win a presidential campaign, mag-
nanimous, pure and patriotic enoiigh to perform the labor of the
contest and yet to forego the official spoils of the victory when
won for the sake of a principle ?

Is my question answered with an incredulous smile ? If no
such virtue can be found among us, then the fate of elective
government here is sealed.

To any mind which conceives aright the relation of the pres-
ent sj'stem to parties, aspirants and the people of the countr}'
severally, this conclusion is too plain to be contested. Accord-
ing to the theory of constitutional government, the sovereignty
abides in the people, and they depute so much of their power as
the constitution stipulates to the rulers whom they choose to
elect in the free exercise of their own judgments, and all offi-

THE FACULTY DISCOURSE. 547

cial powers are to be liekl and received for the ser^ace and behoof
of the j^eople whose money pays their salaries. But according
to the "'spoils system," the people's money is paid to office
holders, nominally indeed for their services to the people, but
actually for their partisan services to the successful aspirant,
who is most probably inimical to the true rights and interest of
the people, whom he thus dominates. As long as human nature
is human, we must expect these hirelings of party to press the
designs of the leaders who are to reward them, with every art of
fraud, sophism, slander, and bribery. Are they not themselves
already bribed by the prospect of rewards to be paid ? The his-
tory of the last fifty years in the United States, since a victorious
demagogue shamelessly announced the rule that "to the victors
belong the spoils of office," confirms the reasoning too mourn-
fully to permit debate. As well might a people have expected
freedom under the late Roman emperors, whose "Praetoriaa
Cohorts" set up the purple to the highest bidder, as under a,
system where the leader of the camp usurps the people's money
to hire these mercenary hosts of officials, to liro wheat, delude^
and bribe them, by whose plunder they are to be rewarded, not
for serving, but for ensla^dng their masters, the people. Either
America must find citizens numerous enough to compose a
majority, intelligent enough to see the j)ei'il and its only remedy,
and self-denying and magnanimous enough to bear all the ex-
pense and toil of this gigantic struggle against official tyranny
wielding the powers and revenues of the continent, and willing
to do all this ^"ithout any partisan reward, purely for the sake of
country, truth and right ; or the doom of free institutions in.
America is fixed. Our coming history is destined to pass, like
that of the Roman republic, through a series of civic corruptions,
and wars to a similar end.

The commonwealths of modern times have slowly emerged
from savage conditions, and the elevating power has been, in
its real source, moral. The real difference between the lowest
and the highest social state of national masses is much less
than men imagine. The submersion into barbarism is a pos-
sibility much nearer and more facile than we think. Our pre-
sent civilization is, after all, only supported by a crust which
is but thin. It is luxuriant and rank, like the vines and gardens
which flourish on the rich volcanic soils of New Zealand, with

548 THE FACULTY DISCOURSE.

tlie devouring fires raging or smouldering but a few feet below.
The green is, perhaps, the more rich, and the growth the more
rapid, because of the very heats which arise from the sulphur-
ous abysses of fire below, and not, like the vegetation of health-
ier climes, from the clear and temperate warmth of a genial sky.
Thoughtless men rejoice in .the rank promise of the crop. But
each imprudent stroke may begin a fissure through which the
mad fires will burst out, widening the fatal rent by their own
fury, until the verdant growth is fii'st shrivelled, and then en-
gulfed in the lake of flame below. This risk ever}' public man
in our country is now running by ever}' act which weakens the
pubhc virtue. Let men beware. The fires are not far below
our surface. Their mephitic fumes are infecting the up^^er air.
Their mutterings are audible beneath our feet. The man who
weakens the thin crust by any stroke assaulting or undermining
the integrity of public and social life is the enemj' of his coun-
try and of his kind.

What is the lesson of general history, but that every nation
or commonwealth which has fallen, has fallen reall}' by its own
vices? Outward assaults have been only the occasions; their
decays of virtue the only efficient causes. Thus sank Assyria,
Egypt, Persia, Israel, Greece, Kome, Spain, Bengal, and impe-
rial France, and Poland. Thus, in a sense, fell our own Con-
federacy ; not, indeed, by Aaces greater than those of its assail-
ants, but by defects of the higher virtues reqiiisite for so ardu-
ous a contest. There is no doubt but the Southern people were
more religious and conscientious than their opponents. When
Providence has a design not to destroy a people, but to pmify
and elevate them, he has often employed as his instrument a
people more wicked than themselves. But we had a whole
world to resist. Notwithstanding the fact that we were called,
-vvith eight millions of white people, to defend our States against
the combined proletaries and wealth of America and Europe,
Had the moral tone of the whole jieople been as high as that of
their best exemplars, the}' would have been unconqiierable.
They fell, not before the millions of bayonets which confronted
them, but by reason of the more mischievous economic here-
sies which their rulers applied to their finances and diplomacy,
and yet more by force of the relaxed morals which these fatal
errors of policy j^roduced. My j^roof is this :

THE FACULTY DISCOURSE. 549

To point joii to that minority of citizen soldiers, so well rep-
resented by Stonewall Jackson, wliose devotion to duty and their
country was lionest and active. Let lis suppose the whole of
the small armies we were able to keep in the field, animated by
their intelligence, bravery and courage, and sustained by the
rest of the eight millions at home mth equal public spirit and
devotion to duty. Would they ever have been overpowered
even by a whole world in arms? Had ever}^ private in the
rank and file of those terrible battalions been a Jackson, and the
whole directed by the consummate wisdom of a Lee, they would
have cut through the multitudinous hosts of mercenaries, as the
armored war-ship pierces the froth upon the turbulent waves.
Lord Macaulay tells us of Cromwell's L'onsides. He ascribes
their prowess not so much to the strict drill which that great
soldier imposed upon them, as to their high morality and reli-
gious faith. He tells us that both in England and upon the con-
tinent, they not only overcame every corps that dared to meet
them in the shock of arms, but shattered and destroyed it.
Such L'onsides had our armies of Jackson been. The state, all
infused with these men's virtue, had been absolute, invulner-
able, the Achilles of the nations, not from a baptism in the Stygian
flood of lucre and deceitful arts, but panoplied from the arsenals
of eternal truth and justice, whose king and Lord is the God
of providence.

I have spoken of the lesson of universal history. To him
who reads it aright, there is one deeper truth which grounds and
accounts for the one I have cited. History is but the evolution
of God's will. Its events arise under his permission or direc-
tion, and must in the final issue conspire to execute his ends.
But he is the God of truth and purity. He has founded all his
numerous works of nature upon the eternal rules of truth and
order, and shall he not thus found, still more, his government of
moral creatures? The invisible atoms of chemistry, in all their
infinite number and countless combinations obey ^\dth unerring
correctness their laws of union. The germs of organic life all
reproduce after their kind, with universal fidelity. Planets and
suns in all their deviovis circles through the skies, observe their
time "svith mathematical exactitude. In the more augiast sphere
of the spiritual conscience, the same law of truth reigns abso-
lute and unquestioned by the right reason. Shall not this God

550 THE FACULTY DISCOURSE.

impose tlie same rule upon tlie destiny of Lis responsible crea-
tures and make tlie universe know that it is righteousness which
exalteth a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people ?

Young gentleman, we of the generation which is about to pass
off the arena, must revert to you in terms of anxious and solemn
affection. We leave you a momentous and difficidt task, the
restoration of the cause of constitutional freedom, which is the
same as the cause of pure morals, which was compromised in
our unfortunate hands. Dare Ave after our disastrous failure,
lift our heads before you as advisers, as monitors ? Our justifi-
cation is to point to our wounds, our premature gray hairs, the
hundred battle fields watered with our blood or sweat, the thick
strewn graves of our companions, our broken fortunes, and to
claim that we did what we could to save your heritage for you.
Had we all possessed the higher vii'tues of our dead heroes, we
should have saved it for you instead of leaving it in jeopardy.
Perhaps no qualities short of the purity, courage, and devotion,
in which some of us eame short, vdU. suffice to you for the task
of rescue and redemption which you are to undertake.

The better part of my powers was spent in the faithful en-
deavor to aid in forming my mother commonwealth to the virtues
which ennoble and fortify the state. She is in bonds and in
widow's weeds, and alas ! and alas ! trailing her garments of woe
in dishonor. Having no more a place there, I have brought such
powers as remain, half-broken and spent, to the service of your
State, in whose broader domain, and under whose brighter sun
and more youthful and cheerful ausj)ices, we trust a hapjjier
end may be achieved.

We old men stand before you with awful reverence — you who
are the rulers of the arena henceforth — and as we lower the
point of our weapons, sorely tried in our combats, before you,
we say, with the ancient gladiators: '' J/oriiuri Salutamzis":
all hail to you ! not Caesars guilty of your country's blood, but
Quirites, her free and true defenders. Take the weapons forged
of adamantine truth from our faihng hands. May they be more
prosperous in the new grasp than in the old. But for this result
there must be one supreme legend emblazoned on your stan-
dards and your hearts : " Let all your ends be your God's, your
country's and the truth's." "In hoc aigno vinces."

THE STAOARD OF ORDOATIOK^

IT is a pungent affliction to me to read two overtures from
the resj)ected Presbj'teries of Wilmington and East Han-
over, asking of tlie General Assembly tlie repudiation for our
church of its time-honored and most vital attribute, an educated
ministry. Those who advocate this revolution are doubtless
moved by laudable zeal to multiplj^ ministers faster, and thus
to extend the operations of our church more rapidly. This zeal
is commendable, but it out-runs all discretion.

Surely it ought to be enough to bring cautious men to a
stand to wdtness the sweeping and summary way in Avhich it is
jDroposed to forsake the whole j^ast policy of our church on this
point. One of their amendments requires that when presbyte-
ries proceed to ordain ministers they shall ndt-.t^tiire them to
exhibit any classical scholarship whatever, lior iany knowledge
of philosophy, nor of either of the languages of inspiration.
Here are whole continents of those acquirements our wise
fathers deemed essential, swept away by one rash touch of a
pen ! ! ! This takes one's breath away.

The overture does indeed indicate a compensation, when it
says that such requirements, out of place at ordination, are to
find their appropriate position at licensure. I seek in vain for
any consolation in this deceptive intimation. For, first, the
arrangement proposed, if carried out in good faith, would be
utterly illogical. According to our constitution, licensure is an
advancement merely j)rovisional and contingent; it merely
makes the licensed man a " probationer fur the ministry," and
leaves him a mere layman invested with no franchise of office,
whom the presbytery may degrade at its discretion without any
judicial trial whatever. But it is ordination which makes the
man official presbyter and herald, and that for life. Here, then,

' From the Christian Observer, of May, 1891.
551

552 THE STAXDAKD OF OEDIXATION

is tlie vital step of tlie goveruiug presbj-teiy. Here, then
sliould be the crucial tests of fitness. To neglect them here,
and remit them to the previous non-essential stage is, both in
the classical and popular sense of the word, preposterous.

This inversion would of itself ensure neglect of proper tests
throughout the whole coru'se of trial without anj more bad
legislation ; but when we come to the new provision for licen-
sure, the last ghost of a consolation vanishes. For presbyteries
are forbidden to require any Latin exegesis, and are authorized
at their discretion to dispense with every other test of classical,
philosophical, and biblical scholarshijD. Everybody who knows
presbyteries knows that this dispensing power, if granted, would
usually be exercised. Thus, our time-honored requirements of
real education are first kicked out of the rules for ordination.
Conservative men are told that they shall be consoled by find-
ing these requirements in the rules for licensure. But when we
come to them, we find them virtually absent there also. Thus,
practically, they are kicked adroitly outside of our church.

Moreover, were the requirements faithfully retained at licen-
sure, the change would work the worst possible exjjediency ; for
it would offer a tacit premium to the probationer to cease his
liberal studies in the interval between licensure and ordination,
which is the verv time when he ouscht to be most diHs;ent in
them. He is thus deUberately invited to become a poorer
scholar just as he approaches the fuller responsibilities of his
arduous vocation. I know not what expedient could be adopted
better suited to teach our young ministers a j^ractical contemj^t
for scholarship.

I would oppose this perilous innovation with all my might by
these fiu'ther arguments.

I. The manner in which oui' presbyteries are already employ-
ing the existing provision for licensing and ordaining "■extra-
ordinary cases,'' renders any change utterly needless, even from
the point of view of the innovators. This useful provision is
doubtless much abused, so much so that without any further
loose legislation, all the half qualified men whom the loosest
lover of change desires, may easily find their way into our min-
istry. The pro-^dsion is plainly intended by the constitution to
meet this case only: Here is a Christian gentleman who ex-

THE STANDAED OP ORDINATION. 553

hibits, in addition to holy cliaracter, experience, wisdom and
piaidence, and the aptness to teach and talent of command re-
qiiired bj the Apostle of Timothy, thorongh mental culture, and
intelligence as acquired and attested in some other educated
profession, svich as the law, medicine, or the professor's chair;
which thorough culture acquired in a different direction, may be
honestly accepted as a real equivalent for classical and Hebrew-
istic learning,

"The law hath that extent, no more."

But how do we see it applied ? To such cases as these : To
some zealous middle aged man who has no culture, and never
will have any in either direction, neither in classical English
literature, nor in the ancient classics, nor in the languages of
inspiration, nor in sciences, medicine, nor law. Here is a
younger man who is said to be a good fellow, but "^dthout
income, who thinks he cannot get his own consent to go
through the long course of studies required by our book, so he
claims to be made an "extraordinary case;" when the only
thing "extraordinary" about him is, that he lacks the pluck
and conscientious industry which alone could give assurance of
permanent usefulness in the ministry, for a person deprived of
early education. Here is another young man who, without
any thorough culture, has some natural gift of fluent, plausible
speech, in whose favor some congregation sends up to presby-
tery the assurance that he preaches abundantly well enough for
them. The soft-hearted presbytery makes him an " extraordi-
nary case," when they ought to have foreseen that the most cer-
tain and ordinary result would be that this fluency, unchastened
by thorough mental discipline, is going to be his snare and his
min. And here is another uneducated man, a very good fellow,
who has a sweetheart, and who thinks he must marry at once,
and that he never could stand the jDostponement required by a
thorough course of study. So some kind presbytery makes him
an " extraordinary case," with the most regular and ordinary
result of forever spoihng the career of him and a very amiable
young woman.

These are no travesties. I make here two points — the door
into our ministry is already made too ^\^ide, instead of needing
to be further widened; and, secondly, "if these things be done

554 THE STANDARD OF OEDINATION.

in the greeu tree, what will be clone in the dry?" With our
present explicit and strict laws, we already have a mischievous
looseness. The adoption of the loose laws demanded by the
revolutionists in the hands of such presbyteries as ours, will
gradually result in total looseness. Practically, we should have
no barrier at all against an ignorant ministry.

II. The overture asserts that their design is "to remove those
barriers for which no sufficient reason can be found either in
the word of God, or in the dictates of human expediency, that
now debar from our ministry many men who are qualified both
by nature and by grace for the exercise of its functions."

I expressly take issue with this declaration as to every propo-
sition and every intimation it includes. I shall show expressly
that each one is a mistake, and is contrary to the facts. What
are the supposed needless barriers ? The overture defines them
for us : a knowledge of the Latin language, of philosophy, of
science, and of the languages of inspiration. I assert that none
of them are "barriers" to the fit minister, but suitable require-
ments. I assert that in fact no qualified man is kept out of the
Presbyterian ministry by these supposed barriers. Some sup-
2)ose they are kept out by them ? Yes. But the fact that they
allow these proper requisitions to estop their j)rogress is the
j^erfect demonstration that they are not qualified men. These
righteous requirements never kept the carpenter, John D. Mat-
thews, nor the penniless plow boy, John H. Pice, nor the mid-
dle aged sailor, Dr. Harding, out of the ranks of oar learned
ministry. And let us notice the cardinal omission of the over-
ture in its enumeration of qualifications. It mentions qualities
of nature and qualities of grace, but the Bible and the Constitu-
tion of our church insist on a third which the overture adroitly
omits. This is acquired knowledge. "The priest's lips should
keep knowledge." Every line of Scripture which touches upon
the topic teaches us that native vigor of faculty can be no sub-
stitute for the acquired knowledge to be employed in the sacred
profession, any more than the muscular symmetry of a carpen-
ter's two arms enables him to build a wooden house without
tools and lumber.

Our church has pro"\dded a mode of entrance into the ministry
for all proper extraordinary cases. To all other candidates she

THE STANDARD OF ORDINATION, 5o5

offers pecuniary assistance wliicli she will continue for seven
years, if necessary, until the scholastic requirements are ob-
tained. Whence it follovv's as matter of fact that no man whom
God has called is "debarred" from the ministry by these re-
quirements. The things which really debar such supposed
cases are self-sufficieucy, the arduous nature of the calling,
impatience, indolence. And these, when indulged, prove them
not to be " qualified by grace."

But I can tell brethren, from an intimate acquaintance of
forty-seven years with candidates and theological education,
how numerous young men of real value are deterred from our
ministry. It is Ijy a natural disgust at the facility and unfaith-
fulness with which its honors are hestowed. Let the reader rep-
resent to himself the kind of young Christian whom we ought
to wish to get into our ministry. He will be one distinguished
for strictness of conscience, thoroughness of effort, high and
noble aspirations, intelligence, and an exalted reverential con-
ception of the sacred office. Is not this the kind of young man
we want ? Well, as an eager spectator, he sees the presbyteries
shirking a part of their duty in trying their candidates, and
many of these candidates consequently shirking much of their
duty in study ; known in colleges as the self-indulgent, slack-
twisted student, and unfaithful reciter in class, and consequently
an unenergetic herald of salvation. The honorable young man
is disgusted, grieved, chilled, and repelled. He no longer feels
any aspiration to belong to ranks whose honors are thus dis-
paraged, and bestowed as easily upon the unworthy as the
worthy.

But if that young man witnessed what our Constitution
designs, the strict and honest requirement of good scholarship
and exalted Christian diligence ; if he saw that the honors of
the calling were hard to win, and worth winning, his sanctified
ambition would be fired. He would remain eager to press into
these worthy ranks.

This is human nature. Society and universities are full of
illustrations of this powerful principle. When I began to teach
in Union Seminary, in 1853, there were eleven students. In
1880, there were thirty-eight, and these were not drawn from
inferior sources, but from the best Christian material of the

556 THE STANDARD OF OEDINATION.

States. I do know, that the main influence under God which
wrought this improvement was the increase in that institution
of the thoroughness of the course of studies and strictness of
the examinations.

The overture asserts " that no sufficient reason can be found
in the word of God," for the constitutional requirements of our
book. This I expressly contradict. Hear the words of the
Saviour: "If the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the
ditch." He tells the heralds of the cross they must be "like
unto householders who bring forth out of their treasure things
new and old." The Apostle says : " They are stewards of the
mysteries of God." They must be " apt to teach." They must
be "workmen who need not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the
word of tnith." They must " continue in reading and in doc-
trine, giving themselves wholly to them." "Thou, therefore,
which teachest another, teachest not thou thyself? " As elders,
they must be " aljle tnen, such as fear God, men of truth, hating
covetousness." (Ex. xviii. 21.) The first heralds of the new
dispensation, notwithstanding their gifts of nature and of grace,,
were kept by their divine Master under three years' tuition.

What, now, is the plain amount of these precedents and ex-
press commands? It can be nothing less than this, that every
minister must have, in addition to endowments of natural faculty
and grace, an acquired knowledge, competent to teach the
system of divine truth correctlj- and fully, and to defend that
system by refuting all gainsayers. But that system is contained
in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. The Holy
Spirit gave these in the Hebrew and Greek languages. It is
these alone which are our infalliblo rule of faith, not any ver-
sion, however honest and respectable. Every judicious student
of exposition knows that when the question is raised upon him,
whether a given explanation of a given text presented in EngHsh
by a pious Scott, or Henry, or Eyle, or Alexander is really the
mind of the Spirit, that question is not fully settled until the
original is examined. No teacher has full right to adopt and
indorse such uninspired explanations unless he is able to test
them by the originals, at least with the help of text-books and
lexicons.

Does one say the piety and the concilience of these English

THE STANDARD OF OKDINATION. 557

expositors give a good probabilit}' that tliey explain the mind
of the Spirit correctly ? Let us grant it. But can that teacher
■who can give his pupils but a probability of what is the real
mind of the Spirit, be called a "workman who needeth not to
be ashamed, correctly dividing the word of truth " ? Plainly
not. Will one say the great mass of the laity cannot learn
Greek and Hebrew and have only their English Bibles? I
reply : So much the more reason is there that their authorized
teachers shall be able to go to the real spring heads of truth.

But a much more important point remains. In construing
the mind of the Spirit contained in any precept of Scripture, it
is absolutely necessary to take into account the state of facts
environing the men who first reviewed the precept. For in-
stance, our Lord commanded his disciples to procure an upper
room for his last passover, and "there to make ready" for it.
Must they understand this express commandment as requiring
them to provide chairs on which to sit around the supper table ?
Such would unquestionably be the meaning of the command to
"make ready," upon the servitors of a modern supper. But we
know very well, as the disciples knew, that our Lord did not
mean chairs, but did naean the customary dinner couches. Now
how are we so sure of this? Because we know with perfect
certainty, though chiefly from uninspired witnesses, that chairs
at meals were not then customary in Jerusalem, while these
couches were generally used instead. The state of facts known
to the disciples and their Lord must interpret to them the mean-
ing of his precept. Now, then, when we hear the Lord and his
apostles requiring ministers to be able expounders of Scripture,
we know that he meant the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, be-
cause we know that these were the languages in which believers
then had the Scriptures, and in which the Holy Ghost had given
them.

We are now at a point of view from which we easily see the
sophistry of a favorite argument of the innovators. They ex-
claim, Paul authorized the church at Ephesus, under Timothy's
moderatorship, to choose any male member their minister Avho
possessed the aptness to teach and other qualifications. He
might be a merchant or an intelligent mechanic. Paul did not
require him to learn any dead language or foreign literature.

558 THE STANDARD OF OEDINATION.

What riglit have we to requh-e it now? Why not do as Paul
did ; elect any pions mechanic, merchant or farmer who knoM's
the Enghsh language, and has good natural gifts?

I reply, that this woidd be Tirtually doing exactly the oppo-
site thing to what Paul did. Here was the all-important fact
conditioning Paul's requirements ; that the Greek language (the
more important of the two languages of inspiration) was the
native vernacular of that sensible Ephesian mechanic ; to us it
is a learned dead language. Hebrew was also a living vernac-
ular to most Jews. Now, then, this Ephesian minister was
already possessed, even from childhood, of a competent and
correct knowledge of the main language of inspiration. Its
syntax was perfectly familiar to him by daily usage in his busi-
ness and reading. The idiomatic force of its phrases was as
clear to him as our English is to us. Moreover, all the social
usages, civic institutions, religious opinions and customs of the
day and country, which were the subjects of perpetual allusion
and illustration in the sacred writings, were equally familiar to
him.

But now that copious language is to us a dead language, all
those familiar facts and usao;es in the licjht of which it was so
perfectly easy for that Ephesian mechanic to understand the
meaning of the apostles, all has passed away, and is to us
matter of learned antiquarian research. How much laborious
classical study is needed to put one of us English-speaking citi-
zens abreast "svdth that Ephesian mechanic in the knowledge of
that language and all those facts and usages which were his
familiar knowledge, but to us must be the learned science of
antiquity. I confess as to myself that I do not believe that my
classical and biblical studies, continued through a long and
laborious life have brought me up to the practical level of that
fortunate Greek mechanic, as to the correct apprehension of the
Greek Scriptures.

But, when the ajDOstle required of the ministers of that day a
certain competency to teach the gospel, we must understand him
as requiring a similar competencj^ of all ministers of all subse-
quent ages. It would be mere dishonest paltering with the pre-
cept to understand it otherwise. If the passage of the languages
of inspiration and the usages of the day and country out of

THE STANDARD OF OEDINATION. 559

vernacular use into antiquity calls for more study from us, in
order to attain that grade of competency, then it must be ours to
give that additional study. How can the honest mind dispute
this conclusion ? Dare we say to our divine Lord that because
the right performance of a duty has, in his providence, become
more laborious, we shall shirk a part of it, and put him off with
half-way service ? Surely not. We see, then, that this plausible
argument is deceitful ; it " keeps the word of promise to the ear,
but breaks it to the sense." Under the pretence of nominally
following the apostles' method it introduces a principle exactly
opposite to theirs in practical effect.

The duty of apologetic defence against errorists, so solemnly
laid upon the pastors by the apostle, presents a powerful argu-
ment. Hear him, 2 Tim. iv. 2, "Keprove, rebuke, exhort with
all long-suffering and doctrine." Titus i. 9, " That he may be-
able, by sound doctrine, both to exhort and to convince the
gainsayers." The pastor is required to be competent, not only
to instruct his flock in the revealed science of redemption, but to
defend their faith by refuting and convincing all assailants. He
must be able to do this " with all doctrine." How much ocoaaxal'.a
then must this pastor have ? Just so much as the assail-
ants of the gospel employ against it. If he is a good knight he
must be so armed and equipped as to be able " to meet all
comers." Now when we remember how rapidly the provinces
of human knowledge are extended, and how audaciously infidela
use the resources of every province to attack the gospel, is this
a time for the faithful Avarriors of Christ to be divesting them-
selves of any part of their armor or weapons ? Take not the
mere letter, but the true spirit of the scriptural injunction, and
we see that this Bible principle must require of pastors con-
tinually widening qualifications instead of contracted ones, as
the expansion of secular knowledge furnishes the enemies of the
cross with new and varied weapons. " To whom much is given,
of them shall much be required." This is the law of Christ's
kingdom and the measure of our responsibility. We Americans
of this age are continually glorying in the lyrivilege of our fuller
light and cidture. Is this only braggart lying, or do we really
believe that Ave do enjoy this privilege of an advanced age ? If
we say the latter, then we are bound to admit that the fair prin-

560 THE STANDARD OF ORDINATION.

ciple of that requirement whicli demanded competency of earlier
ministers demands of us continually higher competency and
wider knowledge. Scripture expressly requires us to be a better
educated ministry than any that ever went before. Is this a
time, then, for diminishing the learning of our ministers ? It is
going backward exactly when the Master says go forward.

In one word, if anything is made clear in the Bible concern-
ing ministerial duty, this is clear : that Christ has appointed the
pastors and evangelists of his church to be the teachers of reli-
gion to men, the appointed school-masters of the world in the one
science of theology. But as Lord Bacon shows, this is the splen-
did ajiex of the whole p;)Tamid of human knowledge. It is the
mistress of all sciences to whom all the rest are tributary, his-
tory, ethnology, zoology, geology, literature, and especially
philosophy, her nearest handmaid. The mistress must dominate
all and rule all lest, becoming insuiTectionary, they should use
their hands to pull down the foundations of her throne. The
teachers of the supreme science must not be ignorant of any
other science. They ought to be strong enough to lead the
leaders of all secidar thought ; for if they do not, the tendencies
of the carnal mind will most assuredly prompt those secular
leaders to array their followers against our King and his
gospel.

Let us pause to see how practical this is, and how true.
Somebody is asking, why may not a sensible good man, well
acquainted with his English Bible, suffice to instruct his plain
neighbors in this science of redemption ? Possibly he might
suffice if he and they were the only sorts of people in the world.
But they are not. Our world is also full of authors, legislators,
lawyers, physicians, scientists, historians, antiquaries, philoso-
phers, all equipped with the resources of learning. Just so
surely as Satan is hostile to Christ and the carnal mind is enmity
against him, these learned classes will refuse to let this plain
pastor and this plain people alone. Just so surely as hawks will
eat pigeons, the very spirit of this " progressive learning" will
insure perpetual interference by every channel which this intel-
lectual activity opens up. As surely as this pastor lives, he "udll
have to defend his plain people from all these j)retentious
assaults. And he will find that the less education his j^eople

THE STANDAED OF OEDIXATION.

561

have the more educated skill will lie have to employ to save
them from seduction. Moreover, the learned assailants also have
souls which need salvation, very sinful, miserable souls. This
pastor owes missionary duty to them; in order to teach the
supreme science to the learned does not he himself need to be
learned ?

Surely, then, this is no time to reduce the education of our
ministers when every other profession is making gigantic efforts
to increase this learning, and when the sister denominations,
once satisfied "vnth an unlettered ministry, are just learning the
wiser lesson taught by our example in the past, and are making
gigantic efforts to secure for themselves a learned ministry.

The untimeliness of this retrograde movement is powerfully
illustrated in the matter of the Hebrew lancrua^e. A new law is
now proposed, the effect of which may be to exclude all know-
ledge of this language from every Presbyterian minister of the
coming generation, and must be to make the knowledge of it
rare among them. And this is proposed at the very time of day,
not only when this remains one of the languages of inspiration,
but when it is rapidly becoming again a hving language in
Christendom, having weekly newspapers published in it and
translations made into it from Enghsh literary and infidel books •
when the language is more studied than ever in great institutions
of learning, and especially when Hebrew philology and criticism
are just becoming the prime arsenal w^hich furnishes the
weapons to attack God's church. Is not this overture a fearful
anachronism ?

III. It is asserted that no reason for our standard of educa-
tion can be found in "the dictates of human expediency." This
again I expressly deny.

The whole experience of the patristic ages, and of the re-
formed churches for three hundred years, is on my side. In the
Latin church the languages of inspiration were dead languages.
The people had the word of God onl}^ in versions ( Veins Itala
and Vulgate), but take notice! The method of recruiting the
ministry was precisely that now recommended to us and now
followed by the churches which we arc bidden to imitate.
Some ministers, as Jerome, were learned ; the majority were not.
TJiat icas the viinistry ichich created the whole 2>oj)lch apostasy!

Vol. III.— 35

562 THE STAKDAED OF ORDINATIOX.

That was the ministry wliicli invented the fatal errors of human
priesthood, baptismal regeneration, real presence, and sacrifice
in the supper, apostolic succession, monkery, jDrelacy, celibacy
of clergy, persecution, penance and indulgence, false miracles,
pelagianism, saint worship, idolatry-, purgatory, and popery.
The close reading of church history convinces any sober student
that it was the ignorance of these men concerning the languages
of inspiration and Hebrew archaeology which was the main oc-
casion of their fatal errors. Ought not this lesson of history to
be vast and black enough to open the eyes of Protestants?

I assert that the strength, usefulness and respectability of the
Presbyterian Chuix-h are chiefly due under God to her standard
of education in her ministry. Had she adhered more faithfully
to her legal standard she would be just so much stronger than
she is.

It is well knowji that the innovators take the data of their
supposed argument fi-om expediency, from the apparent progress
of sister churches which do not reqiiire a learned ministry. They
suppose that these churches are thus enabled to multiply minis-
ters more rapidly than we do, and that this is the valuable cause
of their more rapid growth.

This argument is wholl}' deceptive. The growth of a church
is, in fact, the consequence of a large complex of various causes.
That must, therefore, be a fallacious argument which jDitches
upon one of these causes and assigns to it the whole result. If
the superior growth is sound, the most effective cause of all is
undoubtedly the secret agency of that Spii'it who is sovereign,
and " bio weth where he listeth." A Presbyterian must be the
last man to dispute this. Then, it is bad reasoning for him to
put the main stress upon any external trait, since all of them
must be of very subordinate force. It Avoidd, perhaps, be more
correct for him to infer that it is the superior pray erf ulness, zeal,
and holy living of these churches which make them more pros-
perous, if they are more prosperous. Or it may be the great
fact that mankind are born carnal must make the Presbyterian
Church less popular, whatever hne of expediency it might
adopt, because it presents, to the world only the simple church
order of the Bible, and the strict and humbling doctrines of or-
thodoxy stripped of all the accessories which might conciliate

THE STAXDAKD OF ORDINATION. 563

bigotry, ritualism, or self-rigliteousness. This would have to
be settled before a safe inference could be di'awu.

Is it argued that the other churches present us with really
useful ministers, devoid of classical training ? I am happy to
grant this. But I have two answers. These honored ministers
would have been yet more useful with a Presbyterian training ;
and second, our Presbyterian rule would have saved those
churches from the incumbrance of that larger number of un-
trained ministers at the other end of the scale who have done
more harm than good.

I urge again, that before we throw away our time-honored
system to imitate these churches, it is all important that
we ascertain how much of their supposed rapid progress is real
and solid. An honest sifting of statistics would result in a sur-
23rising shrinkage.

I ^vil\ recall an authentic incident of this. In the early
stages of this ill-starred discussion against our educational stan-
dard, it was asserted that in a given commonwealth where
the Presbyterians could count only eleven thousand communi-
cants, a sister denomination, with an uneducated ministry,
claimed seventy-five thousand. But when close inquiry was
made of a competent and learned leader of that denomination
in that State, he answered that those statistics had been gotten
together irresponsibly upon a spread-eagle plan, and that, com-
ing down to hard-pan, his denomination had about fifteen thou-
sand actual communicants!

There is a vital reason for this shrinkage in the very nature of
an uneducated ministry which furnishes me another powerful ar-
gument. American Protestantism is characterized by a peculiar
evil which I may describe by the term " spurious revivahsm." It
has been often called the "New Measure System." The com-
mon mischief resulting from all its forms is the over-hasty re-
ception into the communion of the churches, of multitudes of per-
sons whom time proves to have experienced no sjjiritual change.
This disastrous result is in some churches wrought without the
machinery of sensational excitements, as where Pelagian or rit-
ualistic teachings encourage men to come in heedlessly and
coldly upon a mere profession of historical faith. In most
cases, however, these mischievous accessions are brought about.

564 THE STANDARD OF ORDINATION.

by sensational liuman expedients. The ill-starred artists stimu-
late natural remorse and the merely sympathetic excitements of
the natural feelings, and deceive themselves and encourage their
victims to be deceived into mistaking these agitations for the
real and saving work of the Holy Spirit vnih a criminal reck-
lessness. They overlook the vital distinctions which the relig-
ious guide ought to make, which I have pointed out in the twen-
ty-first article of my CMected Dimtissions, Yo\. I., in exposition
of 1 Cor. iii. 10-15.

This lamentable art has grown in America to great dimen-
sions ; the victims of its deception are to be counted by myriads.
Its effects for good are so evanescent, that a religious profession
has become contemptible in the eyes of critical worldly men.
Many churches are loaded down with dead members. Church
disciphne becomes impracticable. This nominal membership in-
cludes tens of thousands of silent infidels who have inferred
from the manifest deceitfulness of their own hot religious experi-
ence the deceptiveness of the gospel itself. The average stan-
dard of Christian morals is degraded throughout the country.
The experience of a long hfe compels me sorrowfully to testify
against this method of accessions as the grand peril and curse of
American Protestantism. It has shorn the gospel among us of
the larger part of its purifying power, and Christ of his honor,
until our average Protestantism can scarcely boast of higher
moral results than American jiopery. The mortifying result is,
that after ninety years of boasted activity and asserted success
in this species of evangelism in these United States, breeding
ancl good manners, domestic purity, temj^erance, business morals
and political morals, are at a lower ebb than in any nation in
Protestant Christendom. The evil has become gigantic, and de-
mands solemn j^rotest and resistance.

I know it is an unpopular thing for a minister of the gospel to
bear this witness. But it is true. And my regard for that
account which I must soon render at a more awful bar than that
of arrogant public opinion demands its utterance. Now, rational
investigation and the induction of facts concur to prove that a
lowering of the education of the ministry is ever the main pro-
moter of this spurious revivalism.

There are certain motives which make it popular with ita

THE STANDARD OF OEDIXATION, 565

practitioners in spite of tlie hard lessons of experience and the
cautions of God's word. Those motives are of a coarse na-
ture. Thej are the love of power, the ambition to count num-
bers, the hasty lust for ^asible success, the cra\'ing for theatrical
excitements, with mistaken zeal for the good cause. In a free
country the only antidotes for this mental disease are an en-
lightened conscience and the refining influence of mental cul-
ture. Many uncultivated spirits revel in these mental intoxica-
tions, but to the man of refined culture they are odious and
repellant. It is of more importance to say that it is the accu-
rate knowledge of theology, psychology and exegesis which en-
ables the true scholar to discriminate between these spurious ex-
citements and spiritual excitements. It is the half-taught Chris-
tian heated with misdirected zeal and untrained in the analysis
of motives who is ever prone to make the fatal confusion. In-
deed we find the craving for this power over the crowd is so
seductive, that many are swept away by it who ought to know
better. And none seem to be safe from the unwholesome infec-
tion unless they combine most thorough conscientiousness with
high mental cultivation and a right knowledge of church his-
tory. So long as we fill the pulpit with half-educated men, we
need expect nothing else than the obstinate prevalence of this
coarse counterfeit method, notwithstanding all the demonstra-
tions of past experience.

This explanation is exactly confirmed by the facts. Which
are the denominations most notoriously characterized (and
cursed) by these "new measure" revivals, so-called? Precisely
those which permit an uneducated ministry, and among them
the most obstinate practitioners of the false method will never
be found in the persons of their best educated pastors. If we
are un-willing to have our church corrupted and blighted by this
false fire, we must raise, instead of lowering, oiu* standard of
ministerial education.

Since 1861, our church and church courts have been blessed
with a delightful unity and harmony of orthodox doctrine. Is
there any one who is willing to part with this happy harmony ?
But there is a consideration infinitely more exalted and sacred
than our own religious enjoyment. God has committed to us as
a chiu'ch the one true doctrinal testimonv. Ho has made it our

566 THE STANDARD OF ORDDs'ATIOX.

solemn duty to maintain it, and it alone. This is our steward-
sliip ; we have to give an awful accoimt for it. But I assert
that the only guarantee of doctrinal unity and orthodoxy, next to
the iuworking of God's Spirit, is a thoroughly educated ministry.
The ministry are the main teachers of the churches' doctrinal
system. When they diyide, they infallibly diyide the people.
Again, I proye by both reason and fact that the only human
safe-guard, under God, for orthodox unity is the requirement of
thorough education in pastors.

Consider : Our Scriptural, Calyinistic theology has eyer been
to the opinionatiye a stumbling block, and to the carnal mind
foolishness. Its doctrines are profound. They inyohe the most
fundamental points of riyal philosophies. The root principles
of the opposing systems of theology* are intricately related to
each other and to these philosophies. In order that a man may
be intelligently and logically grounded in the Calyinistic system,
and able to distinguish all erroneous plausibilities from it, he
needs to haye his faculties disciplined by the highest philological
and logical training. Again, our candidates for the pastoral
office need to be kept together, and kept together long, during
this formatiye period, while they are constiTicting for themselyes
theii* permanent systems of thought. Students educate each
other more than their professors educate them.

Every active-minded young man comes to the Seminary with
some doctrinal crotchet of his own. If he is left to nurse it by
himself it becomes the root of dissent and of dissension. But in
Ms three years' intercourse the friction of other minds rubs off
the angle, and the man is saved from what would have j^roved a
mischievous tangential movement. He learns to walk fi'eely
and of his own choice in the King's established highway. The
whole body of students is kept under the guidance of the
church's most enhghtened and approved teachers long enough
to estabhsh them in the straight jDaths.

And let facts speak. The Southern Presbyterian Church, by
virtue of her requirement of thorough training, enjoys orthodox
harmony. The churches who admit uneducated ministers lack
it. The confession of Alexander Campbell was notorious, "that
in his communion all sorts of doctrine were preached by all sorts
of men." The Cumberland Presbyterian Church is now agitated
by doctrinal dissensions.

THE STANDARD OF ORDINATION. 567

I greatly resj^ect the immersionist churches, known as " Mis-
sionary Baptist." Many of their ministers preach the soundest
doctrine. Some of their congregations present the best stan-
dard of Christian morals and discipline which I see anywhere
in our backslidden land. But I have myself heard in Baptist
pulpits all grades of doctrine, from Pelagianism, through evan-
gelical Arminianism, up to strict Calvinism. Hear Mr. Spur-
geon's testimony on this point against his own denomination in
England. So even in the Southern Methodist Church the
greatest theological antagonisms are found. Some are moder-
ate Calvinists, the most are evangelical Arminians. I have
heard some avow the deadliest dogmas of Pelagius, by reason
of their lack of theological learning, ignorant of the fact that
John "Wesley, in his treatise on original sin (against Dr. Taylor,
of Nor-\\dch), had condemned them as sternly as Turretin,
Edwards or Hodge.

I must now remind my readers that when the innovators argue
"from the seeming success of a partially educated ministry in
other churches, they forget a cardinal difference between our
constitution and theirs. It is this : They all have a wide safety
escape through w^hich to rid themselves of their clerical failures.
Our Constitution gives us none. Our principle is. Once a min-
ister, always a minister. A man whom we ordain may show
bimself upon trial to be half furnished, or unfurnished ; he may
lose all relation to any congregation as either pastor or stated
supply ; no company of God's people chooses him to be either
teacher or ruler to them ; still we make him until death a full
presbyter and minister, with power of rule in Presbytery, Svnod
and Assembly, over Christians who refuse to elect him as their
representative. He cannot be stripped of this power except by
judicial process, or upon his ot\ti request by a semi-judicial
process.

But in the Methodist Church, when an inadequately furnished
minister e^'inces his lack of acceptance, and ceases to serve a
pastoral charge or a district, he ceases to be a member of the
Conference. He is no longer a ruler in their church, but be-
comes virtually a lay-preacher. Or else a similar result is
reached by putting him on the sujDerannuated hst. The Mis-
sionary Baptist and CampbeUite communions are independent

568 THE STANDARD OF ORDINATION.

in cliurcli government, and this gives tliem the same safety-
valve. The ill -furnished minister, when he ceases to be a pas-
tor, practically ceases to be a rnler, for there is no authoritative
church court above the pastoral charge.

We find, then, that while these powerful churches have a
wide front door for the entrance of the ministers, the}' save
themselves from the disastrous consequences of a partially edu-
cated ministry by keeping open a very wide back door. We
have no back door at all ; yet some would have us imitate the
imprudence of these churches without their safe-guard. They
seem to find, practically, that they need a very wide back door
indeed.

I was conversing with a distinguished Baptist divine con-
cerning the numbers and power of his denomination in one of
the great Southern commonwealths. He said that they counted
six hundred ministers. I asked him how many were engaged
in actual ministerial work? He replied. About two hundred.
In my astonishment I exclaimed, Then what are the four hun-
dred doing ? He answered that many were teaching, many farm-
ing; some were practicing medicine; a few were lawyers; and
many, from age or infirmity, were doing nothing. A similar in-
quiry as to the Methodist ministry in a large commonwealth
gave like results.

Much more might be said. I trust enough has been said to
convince the sober reader that what our church needs is a more
faithful and strict execution of our rules by the presb^-teries, in-
stead of a degradation of them ; well would it be for oiu: church
to listen at this juncture to the voice of her dead fathers. Dr.
John Holt Eice, Sr., was undoubtedly one of the greatest and
wisest of his illustrious generation of great men, perhaps the
one Yirginian entitled to a place abreast with Thomas Jefferson
in transcendent abilities, learning, and vigor of style. I wish
every Presb^derian could now read his masterly essay upon the
evils of an uneducated ministry, in the Vtrg-lnia Literary and
Evangelical Magazine^ Volume VIII.

THE IMMORTALITY OF TIIE SOUL/

THEY to whom the Bible is a sufficient rule of faith have
this great question happily settled for themselves. For in
the gospel, life and immortality are clearly brought to light.
The doctrine is expressly asserted in a multitude of places, and
is necessarily impHed in the whole moral system which the
Bible teaches.. But unfortunately there are now many who hold
the word of God as not authority. Christendom is infested
with schools of evolution and materialism, which attempt to
bring this great truth in doubt by their "philosophy, falsely so-
called," and which mislead many unstable souls to their oa\ti
undoing.

To such as will not look at the clear light of Scripture, we
propose to offer the inferior hght of the natural reason. The
sun is immeasurably better than a torch, but a torch may yet
save the man who has turned his back on the sun and plunged
himself into darkness, from stumbling over a precipice into an
unseen guK. We claim that we are entitled to demand the
attention of all such doubters to the rational argument ; for as
they have set up philosophy against the Bible, mere honesty
requires them to listen to philosophy, the true philosophy,
namely :

There is certainly probable force in the historical fact that
most civilized men of all ages and countries have believed in
the immortality of their souls, without the Bible. Even the
American Indians have always believed in the Great Spirit, and
expected a futiu-e existence in the happy hunting grounds. The
ancient pagans universally believed in gods and a future state,
except where they were corrupted by power and crime hke the
later Romans and Athenians, towards the verge of national
putrescence. Their mythologies express the real forms of

' From The Presbyterian Quarterly^ of October, 1892.

570 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL.

their original popular beliefs. Their philosophers, Socrates,
Plato, Aristotle, held the immortality of the sovl free from
the fabulous coloring of the myths, but upon more solid
and rational grounds. The fact that the ancient Egyptians
certainly expected the future existence, not only of the soul but
of the body, is manifest from their extraordinary care in embalm-
ing and preserving all the corpses of their dead. The ancient
and the modern Chinese believe firmly in the future existence
of the dead, otherwise their ancestor-worship, which is nearly
the whole of their practical religion, would be an absurdity.
The Indian races are firm believers in immortality, except as
the pantheism of the Buddhist doctrine modifies their hope of an
individual personal consciousness beyond death. The Scy-
thians, Goths, and Scandinavians were firm believers in a future
existence. The whole Mohammedan world holds immortality
and a certain form of future rewards and punishments, just as
distinctly and firmly as the Christian. "We are also entitled to
use the fact that immortality has always been the corner-stone
of the Bible religion, among both Hebrews and Christians of all
ages, as the factor in this historical argument. For this religion
has either a divine origin, or it has not. To those who hold the
former origin the question of immortality is settled ; those who
deny its divine origin must, of course, teach that Christianity,
like the other religions of mankind, is the outgrowth of some
natural principles of reason and feeling belonging to human
nature. Our argument is, that on this lower ground Christianity
must still be admitted to be the most highly developed, the
most beneficial and the most intellectual of human religions.
So that the question which agnostics are bound to ansAver is
this: How comes this highest and noblest development of the
religious thought of mankind to grasp the doctrine of immor-
tality most clearly and strongly of all, unless there be in the
human essentia a rational basis necessitating such a conclusion ?
And here is presented the point of this logic from the almost
universal coiisoisus of mankind. How is it that nearly all men,
of the most different ages and religions, when they think, are
lead to think to this conclusion, concerning a fact purely in\'isi-
ble and beyond the range of all earthly exijerience? There
must be rational and active principles in human nature controll-

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 571

ing tLis result of the thought of mankind. Is it not a strange
fact and one entitled to give men pause, that the supposed
materialistic results of recent speculations, claiming to be sci-
entific and advanced, bring their civilized advocates precisely to
that lowest and grossest ignorance concerning man's spirit and
destin}' which characterizes the stupidest and filthiest savages
in the world, Australian Blacks, and African Bushmen? It is
these wretches nearest akin to brute beasts, who do the least
thinking of all human beings, who are found to have thought
downward to the same blank and grovelling nescience, which
this pretended advanced science glories in attaining.

Let not the followers of Auguste Comte and of Beiichner and
Spencer claim to be the original positivists and agnostics. The
honor of their conclusions was anticipated long before precisely
by those members of the human family lowest down towards
the level of the ostriches and gorillas.

The proposition which soundest reason teaches us is this :
that while the bodies of men after death return to dust and see
corruption, their souls which neither die nor sleep have an
immortal subsistence, which is continued independent of the
body in individual consciousness and activity. This, of course,
involves the belief that the earthly human person includes two
distinct substances, an organized animal body, and an immaterial
spiritual mind. It is of the continued substantive existence of
this latter we are to inquire. Obviously the preliminary ques-
tion must be concerning the real existence of such a spiritual
substance in man. For if there is such a thing in him, it is at
once a matter entirely credible that this thing may continue to
exist, after the body is dissolved. It is a question for evidence ;
and affirmative evidence, if found, is, in the nature of the case,
fully entitled to our credence. In order to determine the pre-
liminary question it is desirable to clear away certain very shal-
low misconceptions, and to settle certain principles of common
sense.

What do men mean by a substance ? The correct answer is
in general, that substance is that permanent underlying tMng to
which our minds refer those clusters of properties, or qualities
which our senses perceive. What the bodily senses immediately
perceive is the qualities — the mind's own power of thought always

572 THE IMMOKTALITY OF THE SOUL.

leads it to believe in the underljiug substance. Let ns take a
most familiar instance: A sensible cliild says, "I liave an
orange." If we ask him how he knows he has one, he will say:
" I see it, handle it, smell it, and taste it." Jnst so ; ^dth his
eves he sees the yellow color, rough surface, and spherical
shape ; with his fingers he feels also its shape, its pimpled sur-
face, and its solidity ; with his nostrils he smells its odor ; ^ith the
gustatory nerves in his mouth he tastes the flavor of the juice.
Thus all that his bodily senses directly give him, is a cluster of
qualities, yellowness, roughness, roundness, moderate solidity,
fragrance, savor. But this child knows that he has in his hand
something more than an associated cluster of qualities, a sub-
stantial orange. His common sense cannot be embarrassed by
reminding him that he has not eyed or fingered, or smelt, or
tasted, substance, but only properties. This child will answer:
" That may be true, yet my mind makes me know that there is
substance under all these properties." For while I see yellow-
ness, if I should ask myself the question. Yellow what? I
should try to answer, yellow nothing. This would be almost
idiotic. If I know there is yellowness, then my mind makes me
know there must be a soviething yellow. If I see roundness, I
know there must be a something that is round, and so with all
the other properties. If you forbid me to judge thus that there
is a substantial orange in which all these properties abide, 3'ou
will practically make me idiotic. I gave one simple instance.
The same facts are true concerning every perception which
rational human beings have concerning every concrete object.

This principle of common sense has also another class of
applications. T\'henever we see actions or functions going on,
we must think an agent in order to account for them. It does
not matter whether we see the agent or not; if we know the
actions or functions are going on, our minds compel us to
believe that there is an agent producing them. Let us supjDose
for instance, that a clear-headed country child or red man, who
bad never seen nor heard of a church bell, shoidd come to a
town and there hear one ringing. His mind would prompt him
to ask : " What makes that sonorous noise, the like of which I
never heard before ? " He is compelled to believe before he
sees anything, there is some substantive agent that makes the

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 573

noise, though as yet unknown to him. Try to persuade him out
of this conviction ; ask him : Do you see anything making the
novel noise? No. Then why not conclude that nothing makes
the noise ? He will answer : because I am not an idiot ; I hear
the noise ; if there were nothing there could be no noise to hear ;
I must know there is a substantive thing, an agent producing'
noise ; otherwise noise could not be.

Now, these are the simple j)rinciples of common sense, which
inevitably and universally regulate the thinking of every human
being who is not idiotic or crazy, about every object of sensible
knowledge. If the reader doubts this, let him watch the per-
ceptions and thinking of himself and his fellow-creatures until
he is fatigued and satisfied.

We come now to the simple application. Every man is abso-
lutely conscious that he is all the time thinking, feeling, and
willing ; then there raust be a substantial agent which performs
these functions. Every man is conscious of powers and proper-
ties, of thought and feeling ; then he is obliged to know there is
a substance in him in which these powers and properties abide.

But what do we mean by the notion of substance? We are
so familiar by perception with material substances, that possibly
thoughtless persons may conclude that we have no valid notion
of substance, except that which possesses the material proper-
ties, such as color, weight, solidity, size, shape; and such a
thoughtless person, though compelled to admit that where so
much thinking, feeling, and willing go on there must be a sub-
stance which thinks, might conclude hence that this substance
must be material, the body, namely, or some part thereof. But
the use of a little grain of common sense corrects this folly.
Anybody knows that air is a substance as truly as granite rock,
but air has no color nor shape, nor do we find out by our senses
that it has any weight. Every person not idiotic believes that
light is a substance, or else a motion in a substance, ether. But
this ether has no color, or shape, or weight, nor is visible or
tangible, nor did anybody ever smelL it, or taste it, or hear it.
Yet all teachers of physics tell us they are as certain of its sub-
stantial reality as of that of granite rock. For why ? Because
our common sense makes us know that, if there were not such
a substantive thing as ether, there could never have been any

574 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL.

light for anybody to see. Thus we prove that the gross quali-
ties of matter are not necessary to the rational notion of true
substance. We are bound to believe in substances which have
not those material properties. Then human souls may be one
real kind of substances.

Does some one ask, What, then, belongs to the true notion of
substance ? Our common sense answers, It is that which is the
real thing, a being possessed of sameness and permanency, the
enduring basis of reality on which the known properties abide.
This description includes spirit as fairly as matter. We assert,
that we shall find spirit to be that kind of substance which has
no material sensible properties, but which lives, thinks, feels^
and acts.

Suppose, now, some student of material science should tell us-
that none of his scientific observations have detected any spirit
in any human anatomy. He means the observations made by
his bodily senses. Now, how idle and silly is this ! Of course,
the bodily senses do not detect the presence of spirit, since it is
correctly defined as a true substance, which has no bodily jDro-
perties. This talk is just as smart as that of the booby who
should say: "I don't believe there is any such substance as air
in that hollow glass globe, because my e^-es don't see anything
in it; and when I poke my finger into it, I don't feel anything;
and when I poke my nose and my tongue into it, I neither smell
nor taste anything." Of course he does not, because what is.
air? A gas transparent and colorless, without solidity, tasteless
and odorless. Yet everybody except that booby knows that that
glass globe is full of a real substance named air, for its presence
there is proved by other reasonable evidences to common sense.
So it is mere babble for the materialist to say that the jjresence
of spirit is not attested to him by the observation of any bodily
sense. For the question is, may there not be in man another
substance not possessed of sensible, material properties, and
yet as real and as permanently substance as any stone or metal ?

Let our common sense now take another step in advance.
When I am directly conscious of a thing, I know it as absolutely
as I can possibly know anything. If I were to doubt my own
consciousness, I should have to doubt everything else, because
everything I know is known to me only through the medium of

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 575

this consciousness. I now assert tliat the reality of the spiritual
substance in me, is known to me by my immediate conscious-
ness, and must be so known, every time I know anythiug out-
side of myself. For, the reality of the self whi^h knows, is
necessarily implied in the act of knowing everj'thing else than
self.

We are here stating the simplest possible truth of common
sense. Let us take the plainest instance possible. We hear a
wide-awake child exclaim: "I see the mule!" Who sees it,
child? I do. Then there must be a vie to do the seeing even
more certainly than there is a mule to be seen. Child, if you
are certain there is a mule, then you are still more immediately
certain there is a me, a self, an ego. As soon as you state this
the child sees that it is and must be so, unless he is an idiot.

This is exceedingly simple. Yes, so simple that no doubt the
child often looks at mules, trees, houses, etc., without stopping
to think about it. But when he is stopped by the question, he
inevitably thinks it. He is more certain of the existence in
himself of the ego, the substance which thinks, than he is of the
reality of any and everj'thing else about which he thinks.

These views of common sense are so simple, so easy, so indis-
putable, that people are tempted to overlook how much there is
involved in them. Let us pause then and review. We have
found that wherever we see properties we must believe in sub-
stances to which the mind refers these properties. Wherever
we see action going on we must believe in substantive agents.
Sensible material properties are not necessary to a true and per-
manent substance. Since every man is conscious of much think-
ing, feeling and choosing, he must believe in the real existence in
himself of a substantive agent which does this thinking, feeling,
and acting. If he did not believe in the reality of the me which
sees and thinks, he could not believe in anything he saw or
thought. Therefore he knows there is in him a thinking sub-
stance, more certainly than he knows anything else or every-
thing else in the world; and these principles of common sense
are so sim]3le, so fundamental, so regulative of all thinking and
knowing that if j'ou could realh' make any man deny their force
you would make that man an idiot. So direct and perfect is
our demonstration.

576 THE IMMOETALITY OF THE SOUL.

The doTibter may replj: "Of course, so miicli is indisj)uta-
ble, I must know there is a substance in me which thinks ; but
may not that substance be body, the whole sensornuvi or nervous
structure inside the bones and muscles? or the brain? or the
little cluster of lobes between the top of the spinal marrow and
the base of the brain ? or the j^ineal gland in the centre of that
cluster?" This is a fair question, and it shall be fairly met.
\\G know the properties of matter j^retty well through the -pev-
ception of our bodily senses. The inquiry now must be, whether
we cannot know through the ^perceptions of consciousness the
■essential projierties of this something which thinks. When we
have informed ourselves certainly of these, we can compare them
with the material properties, and decide this plain question of
common sense : Whether or not the two kinds of 2)ro2)erties are
enough alike to helong jpossihly to the same kind of suh stances?

As intimated, we learn the properties of material things by
the observations of our bodily senses. "We learn the properties
of the something in us that thinks, chiefl}' by the observations
of consciousness, and also by watching and comparing the act-
ings forth of the thinking agent in our fellow-creatures. Now,
we are actually told that some are silly enough to assert that no
observations are valid except those made upon outward things
by our senses. When a child uses his eyesight to look at an
orange, he finds out correctly that it is yellow. When he uses
his ears to listen to the bell, he finds out certainly that it is
sonorous. But they think this child finds out nothing certain
concerning the being within, which does the seeing and listen-
ing, by watching its inward consciousness, because, jorsooth,
this is not sensuous observation ! How stupid this is may ap-
pear by a plain question : would that child's hands and ears
tell him anything about the properties of the orange and the
bell, unless his sense perceptions of them were reported in his
consciousness? Suppose he were asleep when the bell rang.
These sonorous wavelets would pass through the air r,nd agitate
the tympanum and inner nerves of his ear just the same, but
the child would know nothing about the bell. Why not? Be-
cause his consciousness does not take in the sound. Suppose
that child is awake, and you hold the orange before his eyes,
but his mind is so monopolized with an entrancing vision of nezt

' THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 577

Saturday's picnic tliat be fails to notice it at all. Again, liis eyes
tell liini nothing about tbe orange. Wbj not? He "was not at-
tending to it, wbicb is to say, tbe perception of it did not enter
bis consciousness. It is only by tbe mediation of consciousness
tbat tbe observations of tbe senses tell us an^-tbing certain.
Tben it is tbe testimony of consciousness wbicb is immediate
and primary, wbile tbat of tbe senses is secondary and depend-
ent. If tbe observations of consciousness are not to be trusted,
tboso of tbe senses are for tbe stronger reason not to be trusted.

Hence it follows, tbat of all tbe tbings wbicb we certainly
know, tbe tbings of tbe inner consciousness are tbe most certain.
J'irst, tben, I am immediately conscious tbat tbe sometbing in
me wbicb tbinks and feels, tbe self or ego, is all tbe time com-
pletely identical; bowever I may notice it at different times, I
am conscious of its complete sameness; for instance, I go to
sleep, tbat is, my bodily senses sbut tbemselves up and for a
time remembered consciousness is suspended. I wake, consci-
ousness revives, and immediately I know tbat it is tbe same
identical self wbicb went to sleep some bours before. Sleep bas
made a deep gap in my sensations and my remembered tbougbts
and feelings ; but I am certain it bas made no gap at all in tbe
sameness of tbe self. For, again, I am conscious of feebng tbe
heat of fire, tben afterwards of feeling tbe intense cold of tbe
iioi*tb wind ; or at one time of being f rigbtened by a malignant
bull, and afterwards of being charmed by a mocking-bird; now
of looking at an ugly clod, tben of looking at tbe splendid sun.
]S^ow heat and cold are opposite sensations ; fear and pleasure
a,re opposite emotions; tbe ugly little image of tbe clod ex-
tremely different from the image of tbe sun ; but I know tbat
tbe self, tbe me, which experiences these different and opposite
sensations and thoughts is completely the same. I believe in
its perfect continuous identity; and let the reader notice that
this belief cannot be a result from any process of comparison or
reflection; because I must be sure beforehand of tbe sameness
of the mind which does the comparing, or else the comparison
is worthless, and concludes nothing. For instance, suppose two
pairs of two children's eyes in separate rooms were looking at
two apples ; could there be any comparison determining which
apple was the larger? What would the dispute be worth be-

VoL III.— 36.

578 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL.

tween tlie two little fools, each repeating that his apple was the big-
ger ? Let one and the same pair of eyes look at both apples, then,
only comparison is possible deciding which is the bigger apple.
I purposely make these instances perfectly simple. They are
fair, they convince lis that the conviction of the mind's ovm
identity has to be presupposed in order to authorize the mind
to draw any other conclusions, by any process of reflection or
comparison whatsoever. So that the first and most certain
truth which I am obliged to know, concerning the something in
me which thinks, is its perfect identity, its absolute sameness.
But I see that nothing organized has this perfect sameness. No
animal body, no tree, or plant remains the same two daj-s, every
one is losing something and gaining something, growing, d"«dn-
dhng, changing. Even the rock and the mountain change. The
rain and the frost are continual!}- washing ofl" or scaling ofl:' parts.
But I repeat; especially is perpetual change the attribute of
every living, material organism, change of size and form, and
even of constituent substance. Now, none of those who deny
the spirituahty of the mind ever dream of saying that thought
can be the function of inorganic matter. No, they try to say,
thought may be the function of organized matter, of matter
most highly organized. But they admit that the most highly
organized material substances are those which change most
quickly. I make, then, this point : the self ^vhich thinks must
be immaterial, because it possesses absolute identity, and no
organized hodj of matter ever remains the same, in that high
sense, two days together. In the second place, I know that the
something in me which thinks is an absolute unit. This is
involved in its identity. It is impossible for me to think of this
9716 as divided or divisible. I am conscious it is undergoing
constant changes or modifications in the form of different succes-
sive thoughts, perceptions, feelings, and vohtions; but I know
that this me is the unit-centre in which all these meet and out
of which all my vohtions go. I experience a variety of mental
modifications, bxit each one of these is qiiahfied by the same
absolute unity. If I trj' to think of my sensation, my idea, my
feeling, my volition, divided into halves or quarters, the state-
ment becomes nonsense to me. But with all matter the case is
exactly opposite; the smallest body of matter is divisible into

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 57^

smaller. Each part subsists as an aggregation of smaller parts.
The properties of matter are all divisible along with its masses.
The whiteness of this wall may be literally divided along with
the substance of the plastering into the Avhiteness of a multitude
of points in the wall. Let an electrified steel rod be cut in two,
we have two electrified rods ; so the electricity may be subdi-
vided along with the matter itself; but each afiection of the
mind is as complete a unit as the mind is. Thus I am bound
to think that mind is immaterial. In the third place, my per-
ceptions make me acquainted with the attributes of matter, and
I perceive that they all belong to one class ; they are all attri-
butes of extension. The smallest material bodies have some
size, all must have some shape or figure, they all weigh some-
thing, though some are lighter than others, they all subsist in
the form either of gasses, or lic[uids, or solids. Most of them
have colors. But when I turn to mind and its processes, I
know that none of these attributes of extension can apply to
them at all. Let us make the attempt. Let us try to say that
this fine mind is finer than that other, because it has a circular
or elliptical shape Avhile the inferior one is three-cornered.
Attempt to explain the fact that Mr. Calhoun's mind was greater
than a peasant's because it was so many inches bigger, or so
many pounds heavier. Let us attempt to give figure to our
thoughts and feelings, or color, saying that some are three-
cornered, some square, some circular, some red, some blue, and
some black. Let us try to think of the top and bottom of a
sentiment or a volition as we do of the top and bottom of a
brick or a house. We speak of arguments sometimes as solid,
but what we mean is that they are logically valid. We know
that we cannot think them solid iu the material sense of stones
or wooden blocks. The very attempt to fix any attribute of
matter upon mind or upon its processes becomes mere idiotic
nonsense. This shows that the attributes of matter are not and
cannot be relevant to mind. Why ? Because they are opposite
substances. Mind is pure, immaterial spirit ; all the bodies our
senses see are extended, divisible, ponderous, figured, in a word
material.

In the fourth place, when I watch m^-self I am immediately
conscious of my free-agency. In certain respects I choose for

580 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL.

myself what I attempt to do ; nobody and nothing outside of
seK make me choose what I choose. The me, the thinking self,
has this remarkable faculty of power, of self-determination.
Thus self is an original spring-head of new actions and effects.
Let no one deceive himself with the shallow notion that this
power of fi'ee-agency is merely unobstnicted execution by the
muscles and members of purposes or volitions put into the soul.
This is but half of the fact ; the soul is fi-ee in forming those
volitions. It is not forced to them, but is self-determined in
them. Minds are originators of new actions and effects. Xow
matter has not and cannot have such free-agency. Science pro-
nounces absolute inertia to be the first law of matter. Experi-
ence shows that if a material mass was once lying still it will be
still in the same place forever, unless a force from without
pushes it. If it is moving in any line with any given speed it is
obhged to move on thus forever, unless something outside of
itself stops it. Matter can receive effects ; it can transmit them ;
it never originates any effect. It is impossible to conceive of
matter as exercising intelhgent choice, endowed with rational
free-agency. He who tries to think thus of matter makes
himself to that extent idiotic. But mind has fi*ee-agency, it
chooses, it originates. Therefore mind must be a different sub-
stance from matter, an opposite substance. Mind is spiritual,
matter is corporeal.

In the fifth place, corresponding to our conscious free-agency
is our consciousness of our accountability, or moral responsi-
bility for our conduct. This is an immediate conviction of our
conscience which it is impossible for us to escape. It is equally
impossible for us to ascribe accountabiUty to material bodies.
If I, by a volition of my free-agency, strike and wound the head
of a man without provocation, I know it is a sin for which I am
morally responsible. The wounded man knows it, every spec-
tator knows it. Another man when walking in the forest has
his head struck and wounded by a falling branch which the wind
blows fi'om a tree ; this is not a sin but an accident ; neither the
wind nor the dead branch is accountable for it. The man woidd
be idiotic to seriously judge either of them morally responsible.
Here then is the crowning contrast between mind and matter:
minds are accountable because they are intelligent and free-agents ;

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 581

material bodies cannot be accountable; tlierefore we conclude
again that minds and bodies are opposite kind of substance.
Minds are immaterial substances distinct from the bodies wliicli
they inhabit for a time. They are indeed combined in the ani-
mated human person in a mysterious and intimate manner. Such
combinations are credible, for similar ones frequently occur.
But the two substances combined must be distinct, because it is
impossible that any essential attribute of the one substance can
be attached in thought to the other. Now let no one say that
this is but a metaphysical argument. In the sense of such
charges I deny it. It is not metaphysics, but the unavoidable
conclusion of common sense. I ask the reader to go over these
five steps again carefully. He will find that there is not a single
position assumed which every man does not know to be true by
his own necessary consciousness without being a philosopher at
all. Every point in my argument is one of those necessary
principles of knowledge which are found universally regulating
the thoughts of all the people in the world who are in their
right minds, principles of thinking which no man can reject from
his mind without reducing himself towards the position of a
lunatic or an idiot. It is from these simple principles I have
drawn the conclusion that the mind, the something in us which
thinks, is not a mere function or quality of something else, but a
true permanent substance in itself; and since all its essential
properties are the opposites of those of material bodies, souls
are distinct kind of substance, immaterial spirits. I invite the
reader to break these conclusions if he can do it honestly and
truthfully. The more he tries the more he will be convinced
that he cannot, because the premises are the necessary first facts
of knowledge, and the conclusions follow by the force of common
sense.

This fact that our spirits are naturally monads, shows that they
will never cease to exist, by a powerful analogical argument.
They may be justly called spiritual atoms, single and indivisible,
in the same high, absolute sense with the ultimate atoms of mat-
ter. All science teaches us that no such atom of substance, once
brought into existence by the Creator, is ever annihilated. This
is the fixed conclusion of the material sciences themselves, as
astronomy, chemistr}-, ])hysics, and biology. Xone of these

582 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL.

sciences know of any kind of destruction of beings except disso-
lution and separation of tlieir parts. The parts still exist as
really as before in new states and places. "When a piece of fuel
is consumed in the fire, it is only ignorance wliich supposes that
any of its substance is annihilated. All educated persons know
that though the fuel is consumed, every atom of it still exists ;
science is able to catch and weigh every one of them. The min-
eral atoms remain in the ashes ; the watery atoms have floated
upward as vapor ; a part of the carbon particles are sticking in
the chimney-flue in the form of soot ; another part is floating off
in the form of smoke, as volatilized matter, and a part in the
form of transparent carbonic acid gas; not an atom ceases to
exist. Every fact in the whole range of experience goes to prove
that not an atom of existino; substance is annihilated in the
greatest changes known to man ; they only change places and
states. Why then should j^eople suppose that any change can
annihilate the spiritual atoms — rational souls? He who igno-
rantly thinks that death does so, has the whole analogy of human
science and knowledge asjainst him. On which side then does
the burden of proof lie ? Manifestly on the side of the unbe-
liever. Every probability is against him : he must bring iis posi-
tive proof on the opposite side demonstrating that souls are an-
nihilated at death; otherwise the whole powerful probability
arisinsf out of this analoarv remains in force in favor of immor-
tality, and I assert there is not a spot in all the realms of human
knowledge where the materialist can find one real ray of rebut-
ting evidence. Every fact of physical science is against him;
every doctrine of mental science is against him. He discredits
the resurrection of Moses, Lazarus, Jesus, and Tabitha as fabu-
lous. Then according to him, not a single witness has ever come
back from the in^asible region beyond the grave to testify
whether men's souls live there or not.

I admit that I have not yet proved the immortality of the
spirit positively and affirmatively. But I have sho^vn that this
proposition is credible and may be capable of proof. For, since
spirits are substantive beings, and distinct kind of substances
from bodies, the destruction of the bodies they inhabit no longer
presents any necessary evidence that the spirits are destroyed
by bodily death. It is just as possible and credible that the

THE IMMORTALITY OP THE SOUL. 583

•deatli of tlie bodies may liave no more influence on tlie continu-
ing existence of tlie spirits than the stripping oflf of a child's
clothing has upon his personal life. I am ready to admit that
the first impression made on our sensations when we witness a
death is different. The death of a human bod}^ is very impress-
ive and awful. When we see the marble complexion, the glazed
eye, the absolute and final arrest of sense and motion, the irre-
j)arable change from visible activity to dissolution and dust, it
is not surprising that the first impression should be, with us
sensuous creatures. This is the end of the whole being. The
fact that the spirit of the deceased never returns in the ordinary
course of nature to tell us whether it is still alive and active,
awes the imagination, and suggests to the fancy the negative.
But here we must remember how frequently the first sensible
impressions are entirely delusive, and how they are contradicted
by reason and fuller observation. The first impression with the
child Avheu he sees the acorn drop from the tree and he frozen
in the wintry earth, is that the acorn is dead. It is hard for
him to believe that this little dry fragment of matter is the germ
of a tree which will live for centuries a monarch of the forest.
Nearly all the actual exploits of chemistry and" electricity are
equal surprises, wholly contrary to first impressions. Who sup-
posed at first that gas tar, a thing black, stinking, and filthy,
contained all the glories of the aniline dyes, until Hoffman
proved it? How hard is it to believe that all the planets ex-
cept two are much larger than this huge globe of ours, when
they appear to us nothing but minute points of Ught in the noc-
turnal sky! Yet the astronomers prove by strict mathematics
that they are larger than the earth. A.11 intelligent persons see
so many instances of the falsehood of these first impressions on
sensation and fancy, that they cease to regard them as any tests
cf truth. We know that we must look bej^ond them for more
reasonable proofs, and the question for us is, whether facts and
reason do not prove that the immaterial spirit survives the death
•of the body.

The answer is, Tes.

For, first, strong probable proof appears in this fact, that the
identity of the living spirit does certainly remain unchanged
throughout sundry great changes undergone by the body. We

584 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL.

know that every human body changes from a 'living /(jetics to a.
living infant. It then changes into a grown man in his full
vigor. It then passes into the decrepitude of age. But these
impressive changes in the conditions of the body result in no
change in the identity of the spirit which inhabits it. This is
conscious of its own sameness throughout the changes. Hence
there is a clear probabiHty that the next change, bodily death,
also may not interrupt the being of the living spirit. The body
not only grows, but it may lose half its substance by emaciation
from sickness ; it may lose a whole limb by wounds or amputa-
tion ; but the spirit consciously hves on without change or di-
minution of spiritual powers This shows it to be probable that
the final amputation, cutting off all its hmbs from its use, will
not interrupt the spirit's life. Indeed, we are assured by physi-
ologists that there is a constant change in the material molecules
which make up our bodies at any one time. Every tissue ex-
periences wear and tear and nutrition. Particles which yester-
day were vital parts are now '■^ necrosed ^^ and are expelled out of
the system as alien matter, while their places in the living tis-
sues are taken by new particles which yesterday belonged to a
different vegetable or animal. It is every way probable that
there is not one single molecule at this time in our bodies which
was there some years ago. But while, between these two dates,
our bodies have undergone this sweeping change, and those of
that previous j'ear have as literally and absolutely retiu'ned to
their dust as will the corpse of the fi-iend whom we bury to-day,
our spirits are certain of their unchanging Hfe and identity. In
one word, ever}' man's body is daily undergoing gradual death;
this makes no change in the life and identity of the spirit.
Hence the summary death of such a body presents no real evi-
dence of the destruction of the spirit.

Second, Every time we go to sleep and awake we have probable
proof that the spirit remains awake after the sleep of death. We
are famihar with this nightly change. It does not fi-ighten us or
impress the imagination. But let us consider it as a rational
man would, should it have come to him as an entire novelty.
When we grow drowsy we are conscious of approaching insensi-
bility. The senses are all ceasing to act and closing up. If the
mind had no experience to teach it better and listened to the first

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 585

impression it would doubtless conclude : "This insensibility will
be final; this last moment of consciousness is the last I shall
ever exj^erience." But every morning serves to correct this
awrful impression. Every awakening teaches us that this mimic
death of the body has not in the least interrupted the Hfe and
conscious identity of the spirit. Hence the probability grows
strong that the deeper sleep of death will not interrupt it, that
this also will have its sure awakening.

Third, It is urged by materialists that so far as all experience
goes the thinking being is dependent for all its perceptions upon
its bodily sense organs and for the execution of all its volitions
upon its nerves and muscles; hence they would have us infer
that the soul is entirely dependent on its body for all its know-
ledge and activity, which is practically being dependent on the
body for its existence, since without either knowledge or activity
the soul would be practically non-existent. But how does the
soul use its bodily organs of sense and motion? Obviously in
the same general mode in which it uses external instruments.

The soul feels external bodies with its arms as it would feel
bodies somewhat more distant with a stick. The soul sees lu-
minous objects with its eyes just as it sees with a telescope or
opera-glass. It hears sounds with its ears, much as it hears
them with an ear-trumpet. The blind man does not lose hi&
power of feehng by dropping his stick. The huntsman does
not lose sight by breaking his field-glass nor the sense of hear-
ing by losing his ear-trumpet. We know perfectly well that
these bodily organs are not our minds but only instruments
which our minds employ ; therefore the loss of the instruments
does not imply the destruction of the mind : it only leaves us in
ignorance as to the other instruments of knowledge and action,
which the mind will learn how to employ when it shall lose these
bodily ones. But more correct thought shows us that the spirit
in its disembodied state will most probably not need or employ
any organic instruments of perception. The only reason why
she needs them now is probably because she is immured in an
animal body. Her case is that of a state prisoner, who is con-
fined, for a time within the walls of a castle. He has been
allowed five loop-holes in these walls in order to hold some in-
tercourse with the outer world. At death the liberator comes-

586 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL.

and proposes to demolish tlie roof and walls of his prison.
Shall the prisoner be so thoughtless as to complain and object
that in destroying his walls they are depriving him of his loop-
holes, in consequence of which he will be able to see nothing of
the outer world? The answer is plain: the only reason he
needed loop-holes was that the wall imprisoned him ; now that
it is gone he needs none. He has free unobstructed light and
vision all around him.

FoartJi, The independence of the separate thinking substance
is more strongly proved by this fact : that a number of its higher
functions are performed without any dependence upon any bodily
organ. Our eyes are the instruments with which we receive vis-
ual perceptions ; through the ears we receive the acoustic ;
through the fingers the tactual ; through the nostrils the olfactory ;
through the palate the gustatory. But our abstract general ideas,
our cognitions of God, of time, of space, of infinity, of subjective
consciousness, are ministered by no sense organ. Every avenue
of sense may be locked up or disused, and yet these highest
functions of spirit are in full activity. The animated body is still
there, but it is contributing nothing to these most important
functions of soul. Especially does the sj^irit assert its essential
independence in its self-prompted volitions. We will rest this
argument more especially upon that well known class of volitions
whose object is not to move any bodily organ or member, but to
direct the mind's own attention at will to its own chosen topic
of inward meditation ; and Avhose impulse does not come at all
from an}^ outward impression, but from the preference and pur-
pose of the mind itself. Every man knows that his mind fre-
quently performs these acts of voluntar}^ attention prompted by
nothing outside the mind, and directed to nothing outside of it.
Here are cases of the mind moving itself, with Avhich the body
has nothing to do. The mind in these actions is as virtually
disembodied as it will be when it shall have passed at death into
the spirit world.

Some recent physiologists do indeed assert, in the interest of
materialism, that we are partly mistaken in these facts. They
say that every action, even the most abstract and subjective, in
the mind is attended wdth brain action in the form of some mole-
cular changes or readjustments in the nerve filaments and the

THE IMMOET.\XITY OF THE SOUL. 587

particles of grej matter forming tlie outer surface of tlie cere-
brum. They would have us believe that when a man, meditat-
ing with closed eyes, revives the mental idea of the horse or the
tree which he saw a year ago, there is as real nerve action, and
indeed the same nerve action, in the brain as that bj means of
which he first got his visual perception of that object. They
would have us believe that when we think our most abstract cog-
nitions of God or eternity, there must be as real brain action as
when we are hearing the sound of a trumpet. Thus they would
make out our premises to be false, denying that the mind per-
forms any functions of thoughts or volitions independently of
brain motions.

When we ask them how they prove all this, we find there is
no valid proof, and the theory remains a mere wilful, idle guess.
We ask them. Has anybody ever seen these motions of nerve
matter and changes of relative position between filaments and
particles of grey matter? They confess, Xobody. They con-
fess that they will be too minute to be perceived by the human
eye. They know that no human eye ever had, or ever can have,
an opportunity to watch them, because no vivisection could un-
cover the ganglia at the base of the brain, where they imagine
these things go on, mthout instantly killing the subject of the
experiment. Their indirect arguments are nothing but vague
suppositions. The only real source of the fancy is the stubborn
determination to reject the teaching of common sense that there
is a separate spirit in man, and to make him no more than a
material animal. Their real logic amounts only to this worth-
less argument in a circle : We do not choose to admit the exist-
ence in man, no matter how strong the proofs, of anything ex-
cept animated matter. We are conscious that a great deal of
thinking goes on in man ; therefore animated matter does it all ;
therefore nothing exists in man except animated matter. This
theory of universal molecular brain actions has never lieen
proved, it is only guessed ; it never can be j)roved.

But were it necessary, we might admit that coordinate nerve
actions in the brain attend and wait upon every, even the most
wholly abstract, process of mind, without in the least weakening
our fourth argument. There are three remarks to which we ask
the close attention of the reader, either one of which is sitfficieut

588 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL.

to prove this. First, the wonderful faculty of memory must be
accounted for, whatever theory is adopted. This materialistic
theory must teach, as it avowedly does, that the brain is liter-
ally and materially the storehouse of memory. It must teach
that the way ideas are retained in memory is this : A new mark
is imprinted on a portion of the brain matter when the idea first
comes through sense-perception ; and the reason why the idea
remains in memory, and may be revived in recollection, is that
the mark remains permanently on the brain matter, like a
scratch, for instance, made by a diamond upon a pane of glass ;
and the immediate cause why the idea revives again in recollec-
tion is this, that the portion of brain matter has moved again
with a counter-movement, the exact reaction of that which took
place when the mark was first printed on it.

Some of them give us descriptions of v/hat they suppose the
action and counter-action of the mark to be which are all as
imaginative and as truly mthout proof as the history of Jack
the Giant-killer and his beanstalk. The most popular guess is
this, that when the sense-impression first came into the brain it
caused a change of adjustment between the ends or tips of
certain nerve filaments and certain Httle masses of grey matter.
So when the idea is revived in recollection, this results from the
reactionary change of position between those little masses and
nerve filaments. We care not to discuss the particular shape of
any of this idle dreaming. According to its authors every idea
received into memory and stored up is represented by a distinct
material mark upon a material mass. Now one remark breaks-
all this down into hopeless folly, viz., that the brain is a limited
body while the power of human memory is indefinite and un-
limited. The more ideas an educated man has the more new
ideas he can acquire. Some great men know a hundred or a
thousand times as much as other stupid and thoughtless people.
But their brains if they differ in size at all are only larger by a
few ounces at most. Voltaire had a multitude of ideas and a
marvelous memory. His brain was one of the smallest found in
a grown person. What is the use of saying that the mark
printed on the brain by each idea may be very small? When
the number that may be printed is absolutely unlimited the
surface must get full no matter how small each mark, long before

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 589

the stock of ideas in memory is completed. Now add another
fact, that it is most probable no idea once gained by the mind is
ever lost wholly from the memory, but that all remain there un-
conscious and latent, and capable of being revived by some
mental stimulus of suggestion during our future existence : this
theory of material nerve markings becomes worthless and
idle.

Second, Every man's mind knows that it usually directs its
own attention by its own will. "When he is lying in darkness
with closed eyes he thinks of absent and abstract ideas of God,
of duty, of eternity, and not because he is made to do so by
physical causes, but because he chooses. He directs his own at-
tention to these supersensuous thoughts. We know that some-
times men's minds do drift in involuntary reverie, but we know
that men can stop this Avhen they choose. We know that in
most cases the mind directs its own thoughts, that it is not led
by the nose, by exterior physical causes, but guides itself by its
subjective will. Now let it be granted that all our mind pro-
cesses, even the most supersensuous, are accomxpanied hy mole-
cular movements in the brain. Consciousness gives the highest
of all evidence. This assures us that if there are any such mole-
cular movements they are only consequences and not causes of
the supersensuous actions of the mind. It is the mind that
starts the process, it is the brain which responds. Let us sup-
pose that never having seen horses and mounted men until
recently it so happens that every time that we have seen the
men they were mounted upon their horses; thereupon some
chopper of logic like these materialists begins to argue : Gentle-
men, you have never seen those men except upon their horses;
you have never seen the men move but what you saw the horses
move with them ; therefore you are bound to believe that the
man and the horse are the one and the same being, that each is
the literal Centaur. We should reply to him : Nay but oh fool !
have we not seen that it is the men who govern the horses, that
the horses only move when the men spur them ; therefore we
know without waiting to see the man dismount that the horse is
not one and the same being with the man but an inferior being
and the servant of the man.

Thii'd, We know that we are free-agents better than we know

590 THE IMMOKTALITY OF THE SOUL.

auj pliysiolog}', false or true. We know that we are free-agents
even better than we know tliat we have vitalized brains inside
our skidls, for we know our free-agencv bj immediate conscious-
ness; but we know everj fact of outward observation only as it
is reported through this consciousness. Now if this material-
istic theory of thought were true, we could not be free-agents.
Every thought, feeling, volition, which arises in us would be the
effect of a material movement. But matter cannot have any
free-agency ; and if matter thus governed iis we could have none,
our very nature would be a lie. Our own hourly experience
gives us a perfect illustration of this argument. Our minds do
have a class of ideas and a class of feelings whose immediate
causes are found in certain movements of our corporeal nerve
organs ; they are what we call sensations. And about having
them, when once those nerve organs are impressed by any exter-
nal body beyond our control, we have no free-agency at all. If
the norther has struck us, we have no more free-agency about
feeling chilly, if a stone thrown by a bully has struck us, we
have no more free-agency aboat feeling pain, if another man
holds a rose under our nostrils, we have no more free-agency
about smelling fragrance than if we w'ere machines or blocks of
stone. The knowing subject, mind, has indeed gotten the idea,
the feeling ; but it has gotten it from a material nerve organ ;
hence the mind wields no freedom in having "it. So, if this ma-
terialistic theory of thought were true, if all our supersensuous
thoughts, feehngs and volitions were propagated from material
nerve organs, we could have no free-agency anywhere. But wa
know we are free-agents to a certain degree.

At this point the solution becomes easy with those cavils
against the spirituality and immortality of the soul, which are
drawn from the results of concussions of the brain, suspending
consciousness, and of lunacy and dotage. If the reader has
attended to the remarks last made he will easily see that these
facts do not i^rove the soul to be the brain. The}^ o^^lj prove
that in our present life the soul uses the brain as its instrument
for a j)art of its processes. In dotage it is the bodily organs
which are growing dull and decaying; this is the reason that
recent impressions made through the senses are weak and con-
sequently transient. But the facts impressed by sensation in

THE IMMORTALITY OP THE SOUL. 591

previous years, when the old man was in his bodily prime, are
as strong and tenacious as ever. The old man forgets where
he laid his pipe half an hour ago, but he remembers the events
of his youth with more vividness than ever. This proves that
the decaj' is only organic. Were it spiritual it would equally
obliterate early recollections and recent ones. Again, in the
infirm old man, while the memory of recent events seems dull,
the faculties of judgment and conscience are unimpaired. His
advice is as sound as ever, his practical wisdom as just. The
best scientific men now regard all cases of mental disease as
simply instances of disease in the nerve-organs, which the mind
employs while united to the body. Borrowing the language of
pathology, cases of lunacy are but "functional derangements"
of the mind. There is no such thing as " organic disease " of
the spirit. Whenever the wise physician can cure the nervous
excitement by corporeal means, sanity returns of itself to the
mind. If lunacy continues until death, it is because the disease
of the nerve organ remains uncured. The mind is not released
from the disturbing influences of the incurably morbid action
of its instrument until the mysterious tie which unites mind to
body in this life is finally sundered.

Another objection may here be noted: that a parallel argu-
ment may be constructed to prove the spirituality and immor-
tality of the souls of brutes. The higher animals seem to have
some mental faculties, as sensation, passions, memory, and a
certain form of animal spontaneity. It is asked : Why do not
the same arguments prove that the cause in brutes which per-
ceives, feels, remembers and acts, is a distinct spiritual sub-
stance, and therefore capable of separate and independent sub-
sistence without the body ? One answer is, suppose they did !
This would be no refutatioii. The conclusion might clash with
many of our prejudices, might surprise us greatly, might perhaps
dictate a change in much of our conduct towards the animals.
If the premises of a given reasoner are found to prove another
conchision in addition to that which he had asserted from them,
this is no proof at all that his argument is invalid. Let us sup-
pose that a prosecutor of crime has argued that certain estab-
lished facts prove John and Thomas to be guilty. It is no an-
swer to cry that the same facts would also prove Richard to be

592 THE IMMOETALITY OF THE SOUL.

gtiiltj. What if tliey do? It is still iDroved tliat Jolin and
Thomas are guilty. The only change in the case is that we now
find the guilt extends further than was at first asserted. But in
the second place, an argument for the spirituality and immortal-
ity of the higher animals will be found very defective when com-
pared with the full argument for man's immortality. The heads
of argument which we shall hereafter urge for the latter, are
found to have no application to the brutes. But they are far the
strongest arguments. The real nature of that principle in them
which feels and remembers, is very mysterious to us; the me-
dium of speech is lacking between us and them. The real nature
of the brute's faculties is extremely obscure to us, and for this
reason we are ignorant of what becomes of that principle when
their bodies die. But the nature of the human faculties we can
know thoroughly, and therefore we are able to infer what be-
comes of that spiritual substance endowed with those high facul-
ties when men's bodies die. But obscure as is the nature of the
sentient principles of brutes to us, it seems very clear that they
lack those faculties and powers on which our argument, as to
man, is chiefly founded.

Brutes have sense-perceptions, sensibihties, and memory.
But there is every reason to believe that their memory is only of
individual ideas of particular material objects. They never form
rational, general concepts ; they cannot reason concerning collec-
tive classes of things. They think no abstract, general truths ;
they have no judgments of taste or of conscience. Of all these,
which are the truly spiritual functions of mind, of all notions
and judgments of the beautiful, of the sublime, the obligatory,
the morally meritorious, the regulative principles of logic, the
rational purposive volition, they seem as incapable as is a vege-
table. But these are precisely the functions of human minds,
which, we are conscious, go on independently of corporeal or-
gans. These are our crowning proofs of the spiritual indepen-
dence of human minds.

Fifth, Our argument for man's immortality must now involve
as a j)remise another great truth, the existence of a rational,
personal God. We shall not pause to argue this, because it
needs no argument. Men can only deny it at the cost of out-
raging every principle of common sense. The very existence of

THE IMMOKTALITY OF THE SOUL. 593

a temporal universe proves an eternal God. The universal or-
der of this universe, the appearance of design and contrivance
everywhere in it, prove the existence of an intelligent and wise
Creator. Every function of conscience within us recognizes a
righteous, divine Ruler above us. Since the Creator is wise, we
know that he had rational purposes for all that he has created.
Therefore we know that if man had been made only for a brute's
destiny, God never would have given man capacities and facul-
ties so much above the brute's, so useless and out of place in a
temporal and corporeal existence. The brute's instincts, animal
sensibilities, and partial memory of particular ideas, coupled
with his lack of reason, lack of forecast, lack of conscience, in-
capacity for religious and abstract knowledge, and lack of all
desire for them, qualify him exactly for a temjDorary, corporeal
life. But man's rationality, his unavoidable forecast concerning
the future, his moral affections and intuitive judgments of duty,
merit, and guilt, his religious nature, his unquenchable hopes
and desires for unlimited moral good, are utterly out of place in
a creature destined to only an animal and temporal life. No
sensible man Avho believes in a God can believe that the Creator
has made such a mistake. Does a rational man furnish sails to
his ploughs, destined only to turn the soil of his fields, or cart-
wheels to his ships, destined only to navigate the water, or ea-
gles' wings to his gate-posts, planted fast in the soil?

Human experience fuUy confirms the verdict of Solomon, that
the rational man who seeks his chief end in the enjoyments of
the mortal life always finds it "vanity of vanities." Did not the
wise Creator know that? Did he also perpetrate a vanity of
vanities in creating a being thus needlessly endowed for a mere
mortal existence, or dare we seriously charge upon him the re-
proach which the human anguish, in view of this futility and the
death which ends it, only suggested : "Lord, wherefore hast thou
made all men in vain"? Nay, this were blasphemy. To assert
man's mere mortality is a parallel outrage upon all that is noblest
in his nature. This outrage evolutionism, the recent and fashion-
able form of materiahsm, attempts to perpetrate. We ask it,
whence man's mind with its noble and immortal endowments?
It has to answer that it is only a function, evolved from mere mat-
ter, through the animals. Just as Dr. Dar^s^in accounts for the

Vol. III.— 37.

594 THE IMMORTALITY OP THE SOUL.

evolution of the linman hand from the fore paw of an ape, so all
the wonders of consciousness, intellect, taste, conscience, volition,
and religious faith, are to be explained as the animal outgrowth
of gregarious instincts and habitudes cultivated through them.

To any man who has either a single scientific idea touching
the facts of consciousness, or a single throb of time moral feel-
ing, this is simply monstrous. It, of course, denies the exist-
ence of any substance that thinks, distinct from animated matter.
It utterly misconceives the unity which intuitively must be found
underhdng all the processes of reason in our minds. It over-
looks utterly the distinction between instinctive and rational
motives, thus making true free-agency, virtue, moral responsi-
bihty, merit and moral affection, impossible. It supposes that
as the sense-perceptions and instincts of the beast have been
expanded by association and habit into the intellect of a Newiion,.
so the fear and habit of the beast cowering under his master's
stroke, or licking the hand that feeds and fondles him, are the
sole soui'ce of the noble dictates of conscience and virtue. The
holy courage of the martj-r, who braves the fire rather than
violate the abstract claims of a divine truth, is but the outgrowth
of the brutal tenacity of the mastiff, when he endures blows, and
torments rather than unlock his fangs from the bloody flesh of
his prey. The heroic fidelity of the patriot, in the face of the
grimmest death, is but the quality of the dog which will fetch
and carry at his master's bidding. The disinterested love of
Christian mothers, the heavenly charity which delights to bless
an enemy, the lofty aspirations of faith for the invisible and
eternal purity of the skies, the redeeming love of Jesus, all that
has ever thrilled a right soul with deathless rapture of admira-
tion and elevated man towards his divine father, are destined to
have neither a future nor a reward, any more than the fragrance
of a rose, or the radiance of the plumage of the bii'd, or the ser-
pent's scales. After a few years, all that shall forever be of the
creature endowed with these glorious attributes, -svdll be a handful
of the same dust which is left by the rotting weed. The sjiirit
which looked out through Newton's eye, and read through the
riddles of the phenomenal world the secrets of eternal truth
and the glories of an iufijiite God, went out as utterly in ever-
lasting night as the light in the eye of the owl or bat, that could

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 595

'onlj blink at the sunliglit. These are the inevitable conclu-
sions of evolutionism, and they are an outrage to the manhood
of our race. What foul juggling fiend has possessed any culti-
vated man of this Christian age, that he should grovel through
so many gross sophistries in order to dig his way down to this
loathsome degradation? The ancient heathens worshipped
brute beasts, but still they did not forget that they were them-
selves the offsj)ring of God. It remained for this modem
paganism to find the lowest deep, by choosing the beast for his
parent, and casting his God utterly- away.

/SU'i/i, Pursuing this argument from the wisdom of God, we
jprove yet more clearly that he designs man for immortahty by
this marked human trait, that the faculties of man's spirit are
so formed as to be capable of unhmited improvement and
progress. The case of the brutes who are not designed for im-
^nortality is opposite. They can be trained and improved up
to a certain verj' narrow limit, but there the progress stops.
<Some of their instincts are very wonderful, but the earliest gen-
erations had them just as fully as the latest. Neither individ-
ual animals nor races are capable of making continuous progress,
tind doubtless the bees of Abraham's day built their honey-comb
just as mathematically as those of our enlightened century. We
presume that the literary pigs of the ancients were just as well
educated as those of the modern showmen. The mahouts of
King Porus of India, trained their elephants to be precisely as
sagacious as those of Barnum, and the ancient Hindoo jugglers
managed their snakes and dancing monkeys so as to present the
same surprising tricks exhibited by the moderns. But with
man it is wholly otherwise. He also like the animals has a
body and a few animal instincts. These are capable of improve-
ment, precisely like those of the brutes, within certain narrow
limits. Gymnastic exercises enable the athlete to run somewhat
faster, jump somewhat higher, lift somewhat heavier bui'dens,
and wrestle or box somewhat better than common men ; but his
advancement in all these particulars is cut short by very narrow
boundaries. He cannot pass beyond these any more than the
ancient Greek. No corporeal dexterity is acquired in our day
beyond that of the ancient jugglers and gymnasts. When we
pass to the faculties of man's spirit, we find all different.

596 THE IMMORTALITY OF TEE SOUL.

These can be improved indefiuitely and without any hmitation.
whatever. The more the mind learns the more it can learn.
When an Aristotle or a Cuvier has extended his knowledge be-
yond that of the peasant a thousand fold, he is better able than
ever before to make further acquisitions. The same fact is true
of the race. Each generation, ma}^ if it chooses, preserve all the
acquisitions both of faculty and knowledge made by parent gen-
erations, and may add to them. When we compare the powers
of civilized man with those of savages, the former appears almost
as a demigod to the latter ; but civilized society is now prepared
by \drtue of these acquisitions to advance from its present j^osi-
tion with accelerating speed. Recent events prove this ; for the
last forty years have witnessed an advancement in knowledge
and power equal to the previous hundred years.

Why does an all- wise Creator endow our mental faculties with
capacity for endless advancement unless he designs us for an
endless life ? Observation teaches us that wherever God jjlaced
a power in the human essentia, he has appointed some legitimate
scope for its exercise. It is incredible that he should have given
this most spleiidid power to man had he intended to make it
futile by cutting short man's existence. When we visit a niirsery
farm, where the little scions of apple trees and the great shade
trees are cultivated for sale, we see that the nurseryman has
planted them one foot apart in rows not more distant than corn-
rows ; but we see by experience that it is the nature of these
trees to grow continually until each one occupies an area of
forty feet in diameter. How is this ? This nurseryman is surely
cultivating these scions with express view to their trans-planta-
tion into another and wider field of growth, otherwise he is a
fool.

Seventh, The argument is crowned and made unanswerable by
considering man's moral faculties. These centre in the follow-
ing intuitive and necessary rational judgments, which are uni-
versal among right-minded men, and more indisputable if
j)ossible than the axioms of logic and geometry. We have an
intuitive notion of moral good and evil, of the distinction be-
tween virtue and vice, right and wrong, which cannot be ex-
j)lained by or reduced into any other notion. Every man, not
insane or idiotic, knows self-evidently that he is under obhga-

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 597

tiou to do the riglit and avoid tlie wrong. Every man knows
that there is good-desert in doing the right and ill-desert in
doing the wrong. Every man feels the satisfaction of a good
conscience Avhen he does the right disinterestedly, and the sting
of remorse when he does evil. Take this set of judgments and
sentiments out of a man's spirit and he ceases to be a man.

The German philosopher, Immanuel Kant, gives us this inge-
nius argument for immortality from this moral principle, "We
know that it is our duty to practice all virtue and avoid all vice,
as well as we know it is our duty to practice any virtue." That
is to say, our judgment of obligation commands us to be' morally
perfect. Every sincerely good man is sincerely striving to be
better and better, and no enlightened conscience will ever be sat-
isfied short of moral perfection. This is then the voice of God,
our maker, in our reasonable souls ; and it is a voice of divine
command. But experience teaches us that nobod}^ has ever at-
tained moral perfection in this mortal life.

Then surely there must be a future life in which progress in
virtue may be made unto perfection. If God has not provided
such a future state for us, he would never have laid this high,
command upon our souls. What should we think of his justice
and equity if, after limiting our bodily growth to twenty-five
years and fixing our bodilj' decay at three-score and ten, he had
then commanded us every one to grow to be twenty feet tall?
Nobody grows to much more than six feet in seventy years.
How can we be commanded to grow to twenty feet if seventy
years are the limit of our existence?

In the next place, our necessary judgment of demerit for sin
and our sentiment of remorse make us all know that punishment
ought to follow sin. Everybody expects that punishment will
follow sin. We know that God is the fo\intain-head of moral
obligation and the supreme moral ruler. We know that he
wields a providential government over us. This is a truth so
obvious as to force itself upon the dark mind of the pagan em-
peror Nebuchadnezzar, that God doeth his will among the
armies of heaven and the inhabitants of this earth; and that
there is none that can stay his hand, or say unto him, What
doest thou ? On the one hand it is entirely agreeable to reason
and conscience to regard the miseries of this life as the punish-

598 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL.

ments, or at least tlie chastisements, of sin; but on tlie other
hand, if there is no future life reason and conscience ought to
pronounce these earthly punishments the whole punishments of
sin.

Our intuitions ought to make us believe that, as this mortal
life terminates, our penal debt is fully paid off, the ill-desert of
sin satisfied and extinguished, and the creature, lately a trans-
gressor, cleansed of its ill-desert and guilt. As the mortal ap-
proaches death, remorse ought to dechne, and relax its pangs,
so that in the moment of death the soul should be absolutely
freed from death and fear and self-rebuke, and quit existence in
a state of perfect moral peace.

But such is never the case vrith. dying men, unless their intel-
lects are oppressed by delirium or coma, or their consciences
seared as with a hot iron. The soul of the dying man, if in a
rational state, knows that its debt of punishment for sin is not
fully paid. It knows that earthly sufferings are only the begin-
ning of that payment. Conscience is not satisfied, but denoun-
ces the ill-desert of the soul more clearly and awfully than ever
before. Fear and remorse are not assuai^ed, but increase their
torments, and culminate in the last dreadful period of exit from
this world. Such is the experience of every rational soul in dy-
ing, who has not drugged himself with some deadly delusion,
unless he is calmed by the hope of pardoning mercy in the Di-
vine Judge whom he knows he is to meet beyond the grave.
These moral convictions of dying men are dictated by the most
universal, the most necessary, the most fundamental judgments
of human reason. Were there no such fact of a future existence
to ground them, reason itself would be a lie, and man incapable
of moral conclusions.

It is very well known how materialists endeavor to break this
testimony of nature itself to immortality, by crying that this fear
and remorse are merely the results of superstitious fictions
w^orking upon the ignorant imagination. This explanation is as
silly as it is false to rational consciousness. It is but the same
"which is advanced by the pagan atheist Ovid : Thnor fecit
deos. ]\Ir. Edmund Burke sufficiently exploded the miserable
sophism by the scornful question, Qui s fecit tityior em? Xo one
is afraid, unless he believes there is an object to be afraid of.

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 599

The belief iu the reahtj of the object must be present before-
hand, in order to generate the fear. Every man who is not try-
ing to cheat himself knows that these moral judgments, which
are so solemnly reinforced by death, are functions of the reason
and not of the fancy. The imaginings of superstition with its
morbid terrors are the abuse and travestj^ of these moral senti-
ments, and not their source.

There is another broad moral fact which completes the de-
monstration, both of a future life and of future rewards and
j)unishments. When we compare Our fellow-men together wel
see that they do not all receive their equal deserts in this life.
Here wickedness often triumphs and innocence suffers. The
wicked " spread themselves like the green bay tree," their
strength is firm and there are no bauds even in their death ; but
the righteous are afflicted every morning and chastened every
evening. Not seldom the purest human lives are darkened
during their larger part by unkindness, calamity, or bereavement,
and are terminated by a painful disease culminating in yet more
painful death. No compensation comes to them, but the exist-
ence which was continued under the twilight of suffering ends
in darkness. When we set these afflicted lives over against the
prosperity of the wicked there remains a moral mal-adjustment
abhorrent and frightful to every moral sentiment, unless there is
to be a more equitable settlement beyond. These facts are im-
pregnable. Righteousness deserves reward, and sin deserves
punishment. There is a righteous God who rules this world by
his providence. His benevolence and equity make it impossible
that he should visit earthly miseries upon any moral agent ex-
cept as the just punishment of his sins. Since all of us suffer
more or less, all of us are more or less sinners, as our own con-
sciences fully testify ; but men are not punished in this life in
due proportion to their relative guilt. Therefore it must be that
God completes the distribution of penalties in a future life. To
deny this then is to impugn the existence or the holiness and jus-
tice of God ; it is a burning insult to him, near akin to blasphemy.

Such is a moderate statement of the rational arguments which
prove the immortality of our spirits and our accountability be-
yond death for our conduct. The course of the proof also
shows that the denial of our conclusion would make mankind

600 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL.

practically brutes ; for wlion we liave proved that there exists in
the human person a rational and spiritual substance, the spirit,
we have virtually proved man's immortality. Prove sucessfully
that man does not possess this distinct spiritual substance and
lie is made a mere heast. He may be a more refined beast than
an elephant, a pointer dog, or a monkey, but still he is only a
beast. That which alone differentiates him from brutes is
gone.

It is known that there is a vain philosophy, which avows itself
materialistic and which yet pretends to find something in this
evoluted and improved animal to which to attach a temporary
moral personality, moral sentiments, and moral accountability.
We assure such vain thinkers that their attempt is futile. When
we try it at the bar of common sense and sound philoso-
phy^, it meets these crushing refutations. Our mind is nothing
but a refined function of a material organism, and its highest
sentiments are nothing but animal instincts grounded only in
organic sensibilities, evoluted into some advanced forms ; then
it is impossible there can be any valid concept of the moral
good higher than that of mere animal good. It is also impos-
sible that there can be any moral motive directing and restrain-
ing actions. Where there are no moral motives there can be no
just responsibiht}'. Again, if all man's high sentiments are but
advanced evolutions from animal instincts there can be no
rational free-agency. Has the hen, for instance, any rational
free-agency when impelled by her instinct to incubate her eggs ?
But where there is no rational free-agency there can be no just
moral responsibility.

An all perfect God is the only adequate standard of righteous-
ness, as his preceptive will is the only sufficient practical source
of obligation. Without an omniscient administrator and a
future life no adequate administration of justice is possible.
Thiis the logic of philosophy proves that when God, spirit, and
immortality are expunged morality becomes impossible.

The great sensuous masses of mankind will reach the same
result by a simpler and shorter path. " Let us eat and drink, for
to-morrow we die." We may be assured this will be the logic
of the average man when taught materialism: "The scientists
teach me that I am only a refined beast. Then if I choose, I

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 601

maj act as a beast ; tliere is no hereafter for me. Then I shall
be a fool to deny myself anything I desire out of a regard for a
hereafter. Experience teaches me that what they call wicked
men may live very prosperously in their wickedness provided
they are a little politic in observing a few cautions. Then there
is no penalty for that sort of wickedness in this life, and as there
is no future life, there is no penalty for it anywhere. Why
should I not indulge myself in it ? There is no such thing as an
omniscient God, consequently I am free to do an}i}hing and
everything I desire, pro\dded these short-sighted men do not
'catch me at it.'" Indeed, why should your materiahsts stop
short of this unanswerable logic? "The scientists tell me that
I am only a refined beast, and that my fellow-men are the same.
A beast cannot be guiltj^ of crime, and it is no crime to kill
beasts ; why then may I not kill any human beings whom I find
it convenient to murder? Why may I not kill any of these
scientists who have taught me this instructive lesson, provided I
gain anything by it?" Practically, the result of this materialism
always has been, and always will be, to disorganize human so-
cietv, to let loose the flood-gates of crime, and to destroy civil-
ization. In imperial Rome skepticism and materialism became
the prevalent doctrines. With what result ? History answers :
The butcheries of Nero and his successors, the death of public
virtue, and the utter putrescence of the once glorious Roman re-
public, which left it Hke a rotting behemoth to be torn to pieces
by the Goths and Huns. Again, materiaHsm became the domi-
nant creed of the ruling faction in France in 1790. With what
result? The fruit was the "Reign of Terror," which in five
years annihilated fifty -two billions of francs of French wealth,
made the streets of her cities run with the blood of judicial mur-
ders, perpetrated in the name of hberty more outrages and
crimes against human rights than the autocratic Bourbons had
wrought in five hundred years, and plunged Europe in two de-
cades of causeless wars. Again in 1871 the International Com-
munists, a faction of materialists, gained temporary' possession
of Paris. The consequence was a carnival of plimder and mur-
der, until President Thiers crushed them out by force. Surely
it is time then to learn that the tendency of this doctrine always
has been, and always must be, by turning men into brutes, to

602 THE TlMRtfORTAXITY OF THE SOUL.

turn earth into a hell. There is no adequate restraint upon the
wicked tendencies of man's fallen nature short of the authority
of an omniscient, almighty God, and the fear of the righteous
awards of immortality.

Shall all these stern lessons of history and of common sense
be rebutted by the assertion that quite a number of our scien-
tific evolutionists and materiahsts are quite nice, decent gentle-
men? Xo doubt. But what makes them such? The tradi-
tionary influences and habits of action resulting from that very
Christianity which they are seeking to destroy. Their good
citizenship is a temjaorary impulse commimicated to them from
God-fearing ancestors. Let them succeed in obliterating the
belief in God and immortality, society vnYL find too late that the
whole sotu'ce of the restraining impulse has been lost. The
intellectual progeny will tend to become monsters, vrith. the irre-
sponsible ferocity of beasts energized by the powers of perverted
rationality. Does a George Eliot, for instance, tell us that she
still leaves an adequate object for the moral homage of her
materialists in the noble concept of the " aggregate humanity,"
the worthy object of the humanitarian viiiues ? What is aggre-
gate humanity? Where is it? According to her doctrine that
huge part of the idol, which is composed of the past generations,
is nowhere, is rotting in annihilation. According to her, the
part of the idol which is to come in future generations is only
an aggregate of beasts, a suitable object truly for moral homage!
And worse still, this j^art is as yet a non-entity; and when it
shall have become an actuality her votaries, whom she invites to
worship it, will have become non-entities. Bah! Can the inso-
lence of folly go further than this? Or are we told that these
most decent scientists are doing nothing but following the lights
of inductive science and bowing loyally to the truths of nature,
wherever they meet them? We know that, so far as they array
their zoology and histology as proofs of materiaUsm, they are
not paying loyal homage to the truths of natural science, but
misconstruing and j)erverting them. We know that their at-
tempt to disprove the existence of our rational spirits by means
of the very exercise of the rational faculties can only turn out a
logical suicide. It is as though one said to us, we have now
proved experimentally that there are no eye-balls in human

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 603

heads. We ask, gentlemen, by what species of experiments do
you prove that assertion ? They answer, By a series of nice
experiments made with onr visual faculty. But if there are no
eye-balls there is no visual faculty. Such experiments would
be impossible. The analogy is exact. If these scientists did
not possess a mind, endowed with supersensuous rational facul-
ties, impossible to be the functions of mere material organism,
faculties which are the indisputable signatures of distinct spir-
itual substance, the experiment of his biology would mean
nothing to him. He tliinks he is sacrificing at the altar of pure
scientific truth. He deceives himself. He is sacrificinfj to an
intellectual idol. Solomon tells us of men, who, while "scat-
tering fire-brands, arrows and death," said, "Are we not in
sport?" Ghastly sport it is! By what title can these mistaken
interpreters of nature flatter themselves, that they are not scat-
tering the fire-brands, arrows and death which their doctrine has.
always hitherto strewn among the nations ?

INDEX.

Abstract ideas and primitive trutlia denied |
and yet built upon by positivists, 43 ; th.e
attempt to prove them empirical, 45 ; the |
tests of, 47.

Agassiz, influenced by the positive philosophy,
31.

Agnosticism and immortality of the soul, 570.

Analogy, metaphysical and theological appli-
cation of, 412, and experience. 423 ; what is,
424 ; definition of, 425 ; true view, 426. j

Anti-Ohristian science, cau^e of its rise, 116. |
caution against, 116 : caution against based i
upon the threatening attitude of many physi-
cists towards revelation, 118 ; its tendency
towards skepticism. 121 : the wide diffusion
of its poison. 122 ; should not be allowed to
boast of immunity from error, 124 ; its con-
stant fluctuations and changes, 126 ; its large
element of hypothesis. 125 : its incomplete-
ness, 127 ; best antidote for, 134 : the caution
against criticised by Dr. Woodrow, 137 (see
Woodrow); facts proving its evil, 148.

Anti-theological attitude of perrerted science
proved, 148 ; pergonal testimony, 148 ; in-
consistencies into which believers have been
led, 14S.

Anthropomorphism, H. Spencer's objection to
doctrine of final cause, 485.

Appetencies, inherent and functions of sub-
jective activity, 217.

Appetency, distinguished from sensibility, 280.

Aristotle and the inductive method, 125.

Arminianism, Wesley and Watson depart from
worst extremes of, 182.

Artificiality of manner, the estimate of it, 89 ;
its sinfulness, 90.

Association cannot account for the feelings,
287.

Atheism, fostered by positivism. 29 : Lord
Bacon on the tendency towards in philoso-
phy, 156 : tendency towards in pushing Ood
back in the line of causation, 112 ; the ulti-
mate tendency of naturalistic theories, 133,
135.

Atonement, the, and Wesleyanism, 183.

Augustine quoted on nature of concupiscence,
226.

Authority In religion, sources of, 119 : value.
121.

Bacon, Lord, on "final Cause." 477 ; on " in-
ductio Sunplicis Enumerationis," 173 : on
tendency in philosophy towards atheism.
156 ; not the author of the inductive method.
349 ; method, 353 ; doctrine of " Final Cause,"
419 ; " Novum Organum," 124.

Barnes on slavery, discussed by Bled.'^oe. 63.

Bible, the, and geology, 91; its improper de-
fence, 93: its authority in matters of science,
95 : how its testimony as to creation must be
un lers'.i.ofi. i;7; Rome an enemy to a free,
72 ; sneered at by scientists, 161 ; teaches
scientific facts in popular language, 96 : inde-
pendence of science, 98. (See Infallibility
and Revelation.)

Biology, its place in the positive philosophy, 26.

Blackstone's theory of civic ethics, 303.

Bledsoe (A.) his antecedents, 61 ; on slavery.

62 , commended, 69 ; his philosophy, 181 ; his-
tory of, 181 ; relations to the church, 182 ; es-
tablishes the Southern Revieic, 182 : seeks a
doctrinal meeting point for Calvinists and
Arminians, 182 ; recognizes connection be-
tween theory of frte- agency and doctrines of
grace, 183 ; attempt to justify God in per-
mitting sin, 184 ; a new statement of an old
error, 184 : conditions under which his rea-
soning would be sound, 185 : fails to perceive
distinction between sensibility and desire,
between motive and inducement, 185 ; omits
fact of permanent, subjective, disposition in
his analysis of Iree-agency, lt6 : practically
asserts scieatia meiiia, 18T ; misunderstands
true nature of argument from God's fore-
knowledge to certainty of the Creator's will,
188 ; mistakes the nature of free-agency, 189;
teaches a theory that leads to blank Pelagian-
ism, 190 ; talks like Hobbes and Spinoza,
19U ; oa infant salvation, 192 ; on the dogm*
of baptismal regeneration, 193 ; misjudges
Westminster Assembly, 193 ; departure from
Wesley and Watson on original sin, 195 ; re-
gards "the condition of infants a misfortune,
not original sin. 196 ; regards inherited de-
pravity only a misfortune, 197 ; position as
to infant damnation disproved, 197ft' : logical
result of his view of free-agency, 200 ; de-
parture from Methodists on -'perseverance of
the saints," 205 ; iuconsistencies, 207 : prac-
tical effect of teaching his views, 208 ; on
free-agency, 211 : the mischief his views
exert, 211 ; his errors and their insidiousness,
212 ; accuses the author of ignorance and im-
becUity, 212 : is mistaken. 213 ; and self-
contradictory, 213 ; ignores subjective dis-
position in discussing the rise of voUtton, 213;
views on contingency of responsible volitions,
214 ; inconsistency and incoherency, 214 ; on
thamind as cause or efficient of volition, 214;
on distinction between motive and induce-
ment, 216 ; his reasonings against Edwards,
219 ; does not understand what the Calvinist
means by efficient motive, 219fl' ; resents the
charge of Pelagianism, 222ff ; claims that he
holds the Wesleyan Theology, 229 ; on Adam's
holiness, 230 ; his Wesleyanism in a pitiable
pUght, 331 ; special theory of free-agency,
235 ; wrongfully charges the author with not
discussing it. 236 ; use of the term " motive,"
237 ; repudiates Edward's definition of free-
dom, 238 ; answer to argument from man's
consciousness as to origin of volitions, 241 ;
answer to argument from character, 343 ;
objections rebutted, 244 ; his view of inten-
tion or design, 244; distinguishes 'logical
certainty" from "causal certainty," 252 ; re-
sists argument from God's foreknowledge,
250; his evasion, 253: evasion of the argument
for true theory of volition from regeneration,
261 ; evasion of the rcdiictio ad absurdum of
his theory of the wtLl. 262 ; his effort to
change theissue of the debate, 264 ; his notion
of cause and effect. 265 : his petitio principii,
265 : forced to a sensationalist analysis, 266.
Boyd. H. H., views on union of United Synod
of the South, 166.

605

606

INDEX.

Brown, Dr. Thomas, on the emotionp, 271.

Biictmer, Dr., declares the ideas of God and
science incompatible, 168.

Buckle, philosophy of, 143 : Hiatnry of Civiliza-
tion reviewed. 22 ; influenced by the positive
philosophy, 30.

Bunsen's views on the age of man. 127.

Butler, Bishop, on the laws of habit, 464.

Calhoun, John C, and slavery, 66.

Calvinism, and Arminianism. a meeting point
sought for by Dr. Bledsoe, 182 : taught in the
Thirty-nine Articles, 193.

Cana, miracle at, 173.

Carpenter, Dr., on the unreliability of geologi-
cal theories, 158; on the spectroscotie, 163;
on relation of science and revelation, ]C9 ;
caution in respect to spectrum analysis, 437.

Causation, and association, 63 ; distinguished
from fortuity, 479; the law of, and inductive
demonstration. 378 ; a necess4ry intuiiion of
the reason, 378, 38U ; Mills's doctrine of, 412 ;
disproved, 413 ; value of the true doctrine of,
417 ; reason for the hostility of the empirical
school, 418.

Cause and effect, the law of, 129 ; converse not
true, 130 ; law of not to be reversed, 131.

Cause, Final, 476. (See Final Caim.)

Causes, nature of physical, and their induc-
tion, 376 ; the chief question, 376 ; the need
for a true psychology in determining the
question, 377 ; the fundamental character of
the question, 378 ; the law of causation a ne-
cessary intuition of the reason, 378, 380 : the
properties of substances, 379 ; the grounds for
beUeving their permanency. 380 ; properties
not permanent that can produce effects, 381 ;
distinction of accidentia and attributa, 379,
381 ; the varying effect of permanent proper-
ties considered, 386; 'the equivalency and
transformation of energy," 387, 434 : judg-
ment of believed by Mill to be empirical, 412 ;
Mill's view disproved, 413 ; value of the
right view of, 417 : " Final Cause," 418. (See
Causation.)

Certainty, distinguished from compulsion, 190.

Character, ground of, and relatioa to rise of
volitions, 243.

Charters, origin of, 330.

Church and State, 320 ; different theories of
relation, 323.

Church courts, their fallibility, 116.

Circiinistantial evidence, rule governing, 170 ;
application of the principle to creation, 171.

Civic ethics, the various theories of, 302 : as
that of natural liberty and social contract,
302 ; the theistic, 303 ; the legitimist, ,305 :
refutation of the latter, 306 ; the social con-
tract theory refuted, 307 ; is false to facts,
307 ; is atheistic and unchristian, discards
moral distinction, lacks basis of facts, and is
illogical, 308 ; is attended by evil results,
309 ;' cannot account for certain powers, 310 ;
proper theory, 311 ; Hobbes' error, 312 : his-
torical proof, 313 : the Declaration of Inde-
pendence misunderstood. 314 ; equality mis-
understood, 315 ; logical results of the Ja-
cobin doctrine, 316: our inaUenable rights,
317 ; revolution, 319 ; relation of church and
state, and persecution, 320 : theories of rela-
tion of church and state, 323 ; development
of the doctrine of religious liberty, 326.

Civic morality, 530 ; need for and beauty and
desirability of, 539.

Civil liberty, what is, 311 : Bledsoe on, 62.

Columbia Seminary, or Dr. Dabney's memo-
rial, 138 ; Judge Perkins's endowment, 140.

Common sufficient grace. 183.

Compulsion, distinguished from certainty, 190.

Comte's. Auguste, philosophy, 142, 143 ; on the
uniformity of nature, 372 ; Cours de Philo-
sopliie Fo.sitire examined, 22 ; Guizot's view
of, 23 ; the pretended founder of positivism,
22 ; his arrogance and tyranny, 23 ; conceit.

24 ; denies and then uses psychology, 25, 36 ;
the jiractical results of his philosophy, 60.

Concupiscence, is it sin ? 225 : Augustine on,
226.

Confession of Faith and Catechisms a doctrinal
covenant. 130.

Consciousness, testimony of to the origin of
volitions, 241.

Contrivance a function of thought, 476 : argu-
ment fiom, for a Gcd, assailed by evolu-
tionists, 476.

Cori)oratiOus, personal responsibiUty not oblit-
erated by, 540.

Corporations, private, iDoUtieal tendencies of,
329 ; origin of, 330 ; what they are. 331 : pro-
per reasons for, 332 : not needed in America,
333 : dangers, 334 : State laws, 337 : speci-
mens. 338 ; feudal system, the, 329 ; reasons
against, 33S ; (1) wastefulness, 340 ; (2) wr ng-
ful use of money power, 341 ; (3) undermine
domestic and personal independence, 342 ;
(4) seriously affect the general virtue, 343 ;
by corrupting legislators, 343 by avoiding
responsibility, 344 ; by multiplying chances
for secret fraud. 346.

Cosmogony, theories of, 105; relation to geology,
147.

Creation must be a miracle, 28, 40 ; relation to
scientific hypotheses, 107 : traits of natural-
ness in, 109 ; proper conception of, 114 ; theo-
ries of, 118 ; bearing of the doctrine of, 128ff;
sufficifUtly accounts for what lies beyond
authentic history, 130 ; the doctrine of, and
its relation to, theories of cosmogony, 148 ;
Moses' account must be accepted and bowed
to by science, 152.

Damnation of infants, the accusation of Dr.
Bledsoe. 192.

Darwin, philosophy of, 143, 147.

Dead languages, Rome's reason for using, 70.

Death, relation to doctrine of immortality,
583 ; does not destroy the soul, 584ff.

Declaration of Indejjendence, the true meaning
of, 313.

Deduction and induction, current use of the
terms, 349.

Deluge, modern theory of, 118.

Depravity as regarded by Wesleyanism, 183 ;
the Bible teaches, 197 ; native, as related to
the emotions, 295 ; meaning of 297 ; proof of,
298ff. ; remedy for, 301.

Descartes' objection to doctrine of Final Cause,
476.

Desire and sensibility, distinction between, 185.

Determination of the will, how brought about,
238, 240 : distinguished from the self-deter-
mination of the soul, 2 to.

Development theory, the, 119.

Disposition, permanent, subjective, an impor-
tant element in free-agencv, 186 ; relation to
motives and actions, 18? ; is it itself sin, 200ff;
objections answered 203 ; its place in the rise
of volition, 213 ; Dr. Bledsoe on, 215 : a priori
to the operation of inducement. 218 ; relation
to responsibiUty, 233 ; relation to the motives,
284.

Education, Roman Catholic, 70 ; sinister mo-
tives, 78 ; true purpose, 79.

Education for the ministry, standard of, 551.
(See ordination.)

Edwards' argument concerning the certainty
of the acts of free-agents, 187 ; not free from
confusion in distinction between subjective
motive and objective inducement, 219 ; use
of the term motive, 237 ; use of the term ne-
cessity, 237 ; deanition of freedom, 238 :
blemishes in his argument, 239.

Elect infants who die in infancy, meaning of
the phrase, 193.

Emotions, the, subject usually neglected. 271 ;
Brown's classification, 271 ; McCosh's classi-
fication, 273 ; objections to these classifica-

INDEX.

607

tions, 272 ; importance of the discussion.
273 ; relation of feeling and thought, 274-
279 ; number of the terms expressing feoling,
U75 : difference in degree. 276 : relation to the
judgment, 277 : need to properly i-eparate
liungency or agitation from the etseuce cf
the feelings. 278 ; the simple, original, char-
acteristic elements of. 2x0 : sensibility and
appetency distinguished, 280 : grounds of
this distinction, 281 ; conditions tmder which
feelings arise, 283 ; relation to cognition,
284 ; to habitus, 284 : present themselves in
pairs, 286 : the associational theory of Hart-
ley et al., 287 : and its refutation, 288 ; the
theory from self-calculation after experience,
and its refut.ition, 290 ; the author's classifi-
cation, 291 ; the moral quality of, 294 : may
they be used as sthnulus ? 294 ; manifestation
of purpose, or ' final cause." in the structure
of, 295 ; relation of depravity to the other
feelings, 295 ; Kant's view of depravity, 295 ;
proof that depravity is a spring of feelings
and volitions, 297 : from consciousness, 297 ;
from early development in childhood, along
with reason, etc.. i98 ; from its universality,
299 ; from its resistance to duty, Jove, and all
inducements to the contrary, 299 ; the rem-
edy for the disease, 301; spurious religions,
456.

Emulation, proper use of, 294.

England, positivism in. 22.

Equdlity, false claim of, 315.

Equilibrium of the will in the Arminiau theo-
logy, 182.

Equivalency and transformation of energy, the
doctrine of, 387 ; disproved, 434.

Esser's testimony as to induction and analogy,
416 ; definition of analogy, 425.

Ethics, civic. (See Vii'ie.)

Ethnology, modern theory of, 119.

Evolution, 119 ; application of the inductive
method to theories of, 439. et seq.

Evolutionists deny the teleological argument,
476 : their account of results, 473 ; their
claims, even if granted, do not destroy the
argument. 48U : but they do not api)ly, 487.

Exact scit nces, 162

Excitements, spurious religious, their fre-
quency, 456 ; tbe true psychology of, 457 ;
are excitenients always useless ? 458 ; feeling
religiously and feeling about reliprion, 4.59 ;
feeling and the will. 401' ; Turrettin's testi-
mony, 460 ; sympathy and religion, 461 ;
proper use of sympathy, 463 ; influence of
habit. 464 ; spiritual pride, 465 ; "new meas-
uie,'' revival', 466 ; methods and objections,
467 ; ulterior evils, 468 ; the attempted justi-
fication. 472 ; proved sophistical, 473 ; practi-
cal results, 473.

Experience and analogy, relation to induction,
423.

Extraordinary cases, provision for, 552 ; pro-
vision abused, 553. (See Ordinatiun.)

Fall, the consequences of, upon man's mind,
116.

Fallibility of church courts, 116.

Fatalism, a result of the positive philosophy,
28.

Feeling (see Emotin.is), relation to thought, 274.

Final cause and induction, 418 ; essential to
inductive demonstration, 420 ; definition of,
476 ; do the structures of nature evince? 476 ;
Descartes' oVijection to doctrine of. 476; Bacon
has been misjudged, 477 ; physical causes and
final cause, 478 ; the evolutionist's method of
accounting for results, 478 ; position of anti-
theistic science. 479 ; the confusion of fortuity
and causation, 479; the two distinguished, 480;
illustrated by the eje, 481 ; the relation and
adaptation of means to end, 482 ; this ac-
counted for only by prescience, 483 ; objec-
tion of Hume and others answered, 484 ;
Spencer's charge of anthropomorphism, 485 ;

answered, 486; evolutionists' claims do not de-
stroy the argument from Final Cause, but only
push back its data, 486 : evolutionists' claims,
however, do not apply, 487 ; Final Cause
shown clearly in reproduction. 488 ; doctrine
shown by the common sense of mankind,
480 ; principles of induction, 489 ; beUef in
causation, 490 ; comments upon the author's
views, 491.

Fleming on induction, 362.

Foreknowledge, nature of God's, 188 : relation
to free-agpncy and origin of volitions, 248,
2.^0 : doctrine of mediate, 256, 257.

Fossils, pre-adamite, 106 ; teaching of, 174 ;
origin of, 175.

Free-agency and positivism. 34 ; and responsi-
bility, 184 : permanent, subjective, disposi-
tion an important element, 186 ; misunder-
stood by Dr. Bledsoe, 189 ; Alexander, (A.),
on the will. 184, 185 : relation to God's
word, 191 ; importance as a problem in phil-
osophy, 211 ; Dr. Bledsoe's recognition of
this. 211 : the mischief of his views, 211 ;
Bledsoe's view of, 235; fundamental impor-
tance of the doctrine, 236 ; nature of the dis-
cussion of, 236 ; distinguished from free-wiU,
238 ; relation to origin of volitions, 239.

Freedom. Edwards' definition of, 238 ; defini-
tion of the Confession, 239.

French Eevolution, the, and Civic Ethics, 313.

Geology, and the Bible, 91 ; proper method of
defining the relations between, 91 ; the arro-
gance of geologists, 92 ; the w wisdom of the
Bible's defenders, 93 ; the fickle policy of pro-
fessed defenders of the Bible, 94 : the Bible's
degree of authority, 95 ; proper concessions
to be made, 97 ; burden of proof in discussion
rests upon the scientist, 100 ; reasons there-
for, 101 : bearing of the doctrine of creation,
107 ; changes in theories of, 125 ; modem
study of tends to naturalistic opinions. 139 ;
different theories of, 140 ; decisioB for none,
144 ; theories of unreliable, 158 ; Dr. Carpen-
ter on. 15 9; its classification, 160.

Government, radical theory of, 499. (See
Iii{!hts.)

Grote's interpretation of induction, 350 ; im-
pugns the inductive methods, 404.

Guizot's judgment upon Comte, 23.

Hamilton. Sir Wm. . on distinction between
sensibilities and conative powers, 218 ; on the
emotions, 271, 280 ; on application of induc-
tion and analogy, 416 ; definition of analogy,
425; on the inductive method, 356; looseness of
use of terms, 428.

Hartley's theory of the emotions, 287 ; refuted
2S8.

Hitchcock's argument as to natural laws, 110.

Hobbes' theory of causative efiiciency of mo-
tive, 217 ; view of Civic Etliics. 312.

Holiness, concreated, Bledsoe's views of, 230 ;
relation to volition. 244.

Hume's argument, 38 ; unreasonable, 111.

Huxley, philosophy of, 143, 147.

Hypothesis, a leading element in current phy-
sical science, 126.

Idealism, German, and Monism, 524.

Identity of the spirit, 578, 583.

Immortality of the soul, 569 ; the universal
belief of, 569 ; the Greek philosophers',
Buddhists', Mohammedans' and others' views,

570 ; this universal belief must be accounted
for by agnostics, 570 ; the inquiry as to im-
mortality turns upon the question of the
existence of a spiritual substance in man,

571 ; substance defined, 572 ; ajiplication,
573 ; objection of material science that spirit
has never been seen, 574 : answered, .'>74 : the
relation of consciousness, the thinking self,
575,578; may this substance be material? 576 ;
the difference in the properties of material

608

INDEX.

and spiritual substances, and of their appre-
hension, 576, 579 : identity of the Kro, 577 : its
absolute unity. 578 ; its classitication of pro-
perties, 579: its free-agency. 579; its accounta-
Dility, .580 : the doctrine of immortality, credi-
ble and capable of proof, 5>2 ; the relation oi
death, 583 ; the immaterial spirit survives
bodily death, 583; proved (1). by the continued
identity of the living spirit. 583 ; (2). by the re-
newal of consciousness after sleep. 584: (3), by
the relation of bodily sense and organs to the
spirit, as its external instruments, 585 : (4).
by the fact that many of tlae highest func-
tions of the soul are performed without de-
pendence upon any bodily organ, 586 : objec-
tion of materialists to the last argument, 586 ;
answered, 587flf : (5). by the existence of God.
592: (6), by the spirit's capacity for unlimited
improvement and progress, 595 : (7), by the
nature of man's moral faculties. .596 : the
denial of these proofs would make man a
brute. 600 ; the practical resiilt of disbelief
in immortality. 600 ; shown in history, 601
Impiitation. doctrine of repudiated by Jacob-
inism, 503.
Index expurnatorirs, 75.

Inducement and motive, distinction between,
185 : not perceived by Dr. Bledsoe, 190 : rela-
tion of disposition to, 218. {ape Motive.)
Induction and deduction, current use of the

terms, 349.
Induction, the fundamental ground of, 489.
Inductive demonstration, what is. 349.
Inductive method, not first invented and used

by Bacon, 124, 151.
Inductive Logic Discussed, 349 ; vague opinions
of its nature, 349 ; this vagueness accounted
for, 35u ; the disagreements of professed
logicians. 3.50 ; as Grote, 351 : St. Hilaire, 352.
356 : Whewell, 352, 360 : TJeberweg. 353 ; Lord
Bacon's method, 353 : JliU's verdict on the
Baconian Organum, 3i5 : Sir Isaac Newton's
advance, 356 : Sir William Hamilton's view,
356 : Archbishop Whateley's iuterpre'ation of
the true method, 358 : and the difficulties in
his svllogism. 3.59 : Lord Macaulay's view,

362 : Fleming's, 362 ; Mco'o^h's, 363 : Bowen's,

363 ; Porter's, 363 : Dugald Stewart's, 363 :
Will's, 366 : Mill's view inconsistent, 3P8 :
ignores effects which are negative. 309 :
benefits of this historical re\ie.w, 370 : the
uniformity of nature considered, 371 ; how
induction cannot be a demonstration, 374 :
but what it does teach, 375 : the inductic'n
of physical causes, 376 : a true psychologv
necessary to explain, 377 : the law of causa
tion the foundation of inductive demonstra-
tion. 378 : the permanency of the properties
of substances, 379 ; grounds for believing
their permanency, 380 ; the varying effects
of permanent properties considered. 386 : the
equivalency and transformation of entrgy.
387 ; the aim of real induction. 3.^9 : the in-
duction from agreeing instances remains
probability only, 391 ; reasons therefor, 3hi> :
the methods of induction. 394; "method of
agreement," 396: "method of differences,"
398 ; a combination of these two, 400 :
"method of residues," 401; ' m»thod of
corresponding variations," 402 : this enum-
eration exhaustive, 403 : when these methods
are insufficient. 405 ; the verification. 405 :
induction in syllogistic form. 408 ; metaphys
ical and theological application, 412 ; Jlill's
doctrine of cause disproved 414 : Ksser's and
Hamilton's views, 416 ; value of right doctrine
of cause, 417 ; final cause and induction, 418 :
reason for the hostility of the empirical
school 418 ; Bacon quoted, 419 : i^-ithout final
causes inductive demonstration has no basis,
420 : the results of intuitive expectation of
universality of law of cause. 421 ; experience
and anology, 423 ; relation to induction, 423 :
definitions 'of analogy, 4'24 ; the true yiew.

426 ; the apodeictic induction, 427 : looseness
of terms, 4'28 ; the caution necessary in apply-
ing induction, 428 : the comprehens-ive law,
429 ; analogy of the courts, 430 : relation of
parole testimony. 431 ; summary of the dis-
cussion. 433 : illustration by application to
theory of " equivalency and transformation of
energy," 434 : to theories based upon spectro-
scopic phenomena. 4.36 ; to geology, 438 : to
theories of evolution, 439 : to ethical prob-
lems. 453.

Infallibility of the Bible, not to be surrendered,
122 ; the ground of its acceptance as a rale
of faith and life, 123 : not recognized by
scientists, 151 ; how approximated by science,
152.

Infant salvation. 192.

Inspiration, best method of defence, 138 ; dis-
credited by certain physicists. 119 ; the prac-
tical effect of Jacobinism upon one's views of,
516 : " Innate ideas." 42.

Intuitive beliefs, observation and experience
not the proof of, 48, 49.

Jacobinism, 500. (See Rights.)
Jacobin, doctrine of civic Ubertv, 314 ; logical
results of, 316.

Kant, on the emotions, 271, 295.

Language, its relation to literature and civiliza-
tion, 7] ; its special relation to religion, 71.

Legal Profession, Morality of, 1 ; theory of, 2 ;
not merely commercial or pecuniary. 4 ; not
justified, professionally or morally, in ad-
vocacy of cause known to be unrighteous
4 ; evil shown by present state of ad-
ministration of justice, 5 : by the tendency
to descend to still lower grades of expedients
and usages, 7 : and the temptation irresisti-
ble. 9 ; by the fact that it gives an unlawful
view of a court of justice, 10 ; which is con-
cerned with truth and right, and is not a de-
bating society, 11 ; by the shifting of respon-
sibiUty which it involves, 13, 16 : and by the
evil done to one's own virtue by the advocacy
of that which is known to be evil, 18.

Legitimist theory of civic ethics, 305.

Leibnitz and Locke, 41.

Liberty, and slavery, 61 ; definition of, 62 ; re-
lation of civil and natural, 311.

Liberty, religious, development of the doctrine,
326.

Locke, on the emotions, 280.

Lubbock's, Sir J., views of origin of our civiliza-
tion. "27.

Lyell, Sir Charles, on the world's age, 101, 141,
144, 158, 160.

Macaulay. Lord, on the inductive method, 362.

Man. age of, upon the globe, 118.

Master and slave, is the relation right ? 64.

Materialism, the result of the positive phil-
osophy, 142, 27.

Uaterialistic philosophy and monism, 524.

McCosh on the emotions, 271 ; on induction,
363.

Memorial on seminary instruction, 137 ; its
treatment, 138.

Metaphysics repudiated by positivism, 37 ; and
yet used, 38 ; need for it, 40.

Method of difference, the common method, 424.

Mill, John Stuart, Logic reviewed, 22 : influ-
enced by the positive philosophy, 30, 57 ; on
absolute truths, 52 : philosophy of, 143 : on
generalizing from experience, 173 : testimony
against false physical science, 350 : disparage-
ment of the Baconian method, 355 : state-
ment of the inductive logic, 366 ; defects,
368 : on the uniformity of nature, 372 : fol-
lows the perverse metaphysic of Jamts Mill,
and Hume, 412.

Miller, Hugh, on the world's age, 101, 103.

Mind of man, the, impaired by the fall.

INDEX.

609

Mohammedanism and the imnDortality of the
sovd, 570.

Mohna, and the doctrine of mediate foreknow-
)edf?e, 257.

Monad, the spirit a, 578, 581.

Monism, statement of the doctrine, 523 ; its in
fluence and early teachers, 523 ; seen also in
German idealism and matf rialism. 5J4 : the
arguments offered to substantiate, 5'25 ; these
arguments examined, 526 : the doctrine leads
inevitably to atheism or pantheism, 526; is the
result of an over eag»r craving for sinjplifica-
tion, 527 ; is unscientific in place, time, and
manner, 527 : contradicts the necessary laws
of thought and truths of experience, 530 : de-
nies the intuitive judgment that action must
imply an agent, 532.

Moral evidence for the truth of the Bible, 123 ;
its nature and conditions, 124flf.

Moral faculties, their relation to immortaUty,
596i

Morality of the legal profession, 1.

Morell's Speculative Philosophy reviewed , 22.

Moses and the Westminster Confession's inter-
pretation of, 179.

Motive and inducement, distinction between,
185 : not perceived by Dr. Bledsoe, 190.

Motive, its efficiency, 216 : distinguished from
inducement, 216 ; distinction has been over-
looked in philosophy, 210, 218 ; results of
wrong views of its relation to volition, 217,
218.

Motives, relative, strength of. 267 : Bledsoe's
view of, 267 ; the true view, 263 ; the term as
used by Bledsoe, 233. 237 ; distinguished from
inducement, 237 ; what is an efficient ? 237 ;
not properly distinguished from inducement
by Edwards, 239 ; motives, subjective, deter-
mine the morality of volitions, 274

Mysticism, in the early church, 117.

Naturahsm and positivism, 22, 29 ; exaltation
of, by the physical sciences, 118; its atheistical
tendency, 128 ; the author accused of a wrong
use of the word, 159.

Naturalness, traits of essential in a creation,
131 ; proved, 132 ; to deny is belief in infinite
series of finite organisms, 132 ; the argument
from, 143 ; traits of in an immediate creation,
144 ; traits of, reasons for in creation, 164 ;
do not invaUdate supernatural origin of the
world, 166 ; Prof. F. H. Smith's views, 169.

Natural theology, discarded by Dr. Hooker, 43.

Nature, the interpretation of, according to Lord
Bacon, 354 ; uniformity considered, 371. (See
Causes, physical.)

Nature, uniformitv of. Mill's theory, 415.

Nebular hypothesis, the, 119, 126, 163.

Necessity, the term not objectionable when
properly interpreted, 237 ; meaning of, 241.

Negroes, enfranchisement of and Jacobinism,
316.

Newton, Sir Isaac, on the inductive method,
356.

Oaths, the sanctity of based in reUgious obliga-
tion, 537.

Omnipotence and wisdom of God sufficiently
account for creation, 134.

Ordination, the lowering of the standard of,
551 ; arguments against, 562 ; extraordinary
cases already provided for, 552 ; the grounds
for seeking a lowering considered. 554 ; the
standard in Paul's day, .557 : the demands of
modern culture in other professions, 561 ; the
results in other churches considered, 561.

Original sin, and infant damnation, 194 ; Wesley
and Watson on, 195 ; proof of, 197ff ; Bledsoe
on, 229 ; Wesley on, 229, 248 ; relation to true
doctrine of volition, 260.

Palmer, B. M., words of, 165.
Pantheism, the necessary corollary of monism,
526.

Parole-teBtimony and induction, 431 ; on evolu-
tion, 449.

Passion, proper meaning of, 276.

Pelagianism, Dr. Bledsoe accused of, 222 ; what
is. 222 ; Dr. Bledsoe's acceptance of its prin-
ciples. 223S' ; Bledsoe's view of relation to
volition, 256 ; position of Dr. Taylor, 230 ; of
Bledsoe, 231 ; Watson on, 232,

Perseverance of the saints, Bledsoe's doctrine
of, 205, 247, 248.

Philosophy of volition. (See Volitimi.)

Philosophy, the positive. (See Positivism.)

Physics, the theological relation of, 156.

Policy or expediency, not the test of right, 6.

Political rights, incidentally taught in the
Scriptures', 498. (See Rights.)

Politics and religion, 536.

Polygamy, and slavery not comparable, 63.

Popish hterature, etc., 70.

Porter. Noah, on the emotions, 271, Q80 ; on in-
duction, 363.

Positivism, its pretext, 24 ; its claim, 24 ; its
fundamental character and principles, 25 ; its
classification of human science, 26 ; its corol-
laries, 27 ; rank materiahsm, 27 ; rigid fatal-
ism, 28 ; its influence on the Continent and
in Great Britain, 29, 30 : productive of atheism
and irreligion, 29 ; its power illustrated in the
case of John Stuart Mill, 30 : and of Thomas
Buckle, 30 ; and of Dr. Hooker, 31 ; influence
in America, 31 : leads to despair, 32 ; its
affectation of philosophic calmness, 32 ; its
bigotry, 32 ; its baseless character exposed, 33;
it is arrayed against rudimental instincts of
man's reason and conscience. 33 ; it misstates
the history of the human mind, 34 : it makes
an impotent defence of man's free agency,
35 ; it scouts all metaphysical sciene, 37 : and
yet must needs use it, 38 ; the relationship to
exploded vagaries, 38 ; one-sided and frag
mentaiy in its observations of the efl'ects in
nature, 41 ; it despises abstract ideas and
primitive jiidgments, 43 ; and yet of necessity
bnllds every thing upon ihem. 43; its reason-
ing concerning intuitive behef a or judgments,
48, 50, 51 ; vicious view of association, 53 :
false claim of the greater fruitfulness of
phy.'ical sciences, 57 ; is itself not "positive,"
58 ; its unhappy results and inefficiency, 60 ;
the name affected by modern philosophy,
117; definition of, 141; relation to monism, 524.

Protestantism andieUgious discussion, 73 ; and
free inqmry, 74.

Psychology, reason and need for, and results
of, 37, 40, 377 ; used by the positivist, 38, 43 ;
that of c< mmon sense, 45.

Pulpit style, simplicity in, 80 ; causes for viola-
tion of, 81 ; need for, 82 ; not opposed to the
demands of a true rhetoric, 82 ; is natural, 8.3;
demanded by the preacher's topic and aim,
83 ; by the nature of the soul's operations, 84;
by the acknowledgments of those who are
perverted, 85 ; by the preacher's subject and
purpose, 85 ; simplicity not baldness, 87 ; its
consistency and appropriateness, 88.

Reason, rudimental instincts of, repudiate posi-
tivism, 33.

Regeneration, and true theory of volition, 260.

Religion and political prosperity, 536.

Religious excitements, spurious, 4.56.

Representative government, doctrine of, taught
in Scriptures, 498.

Responsibility, personal, for official acts, 16.

Responsibility and disposition. 233 ; and free-
agency. 236 ; of individuals for acts of cor-
porate bodies, .540.

Revelation, its independence of science, 98 ;
may use iUnstrations, 98 ; threatening atti-
tude of physicists towards. 118 ; the hostile
and depreciatory posture and tone of physi-
cists, 119 ; entitled to the ground until dis-
proved, 127 ; its adequate account of pheno-
mena, 128.

610

INDEX.

Revivals of religion, falsely bo called, 456 ;
(see Excitements), new measurefl in. 466 ;
methods and objections, 467 : practical re-
sults, 472, et seq ; new measures, 565.

Bevolution, when right and under what circum-
stances, 319.

Eights, Anti-Biblical Theories of, baeed in en-
mity to God, 497 ; assuming new forms, 497 :
proper theory incidentally taught in S. S.,
498 : radical theory of, 499 ; accepted, through
thoughtlessness, in America, 500 ; corollaries
of this theory, 500 : woman suffrage, 501 :
slavery, 501 ; can the Jacobin theory and the
Bible stand together, 502 ; the theory repudi-
ates the general doctrine of imxjutatiou, 503 ;
denies distinctions of franchise or privilege,

504 ; abhors what it wrongfully calls "caste,"

505 : demands universal suffrage, 507 ; neces-
sitates " woman's rights,'' .507; denies the law-
fulness of slavery, 509 ; the danger of the
theory, 514 ; effect upon faith, 516 ; especially
in inspiration, 516 ; the duty of right-minded
Christians, 618; especially as to the beginnings
of error, 520.

Roman Catholic literature and education, 70.

Rome and literature and education, 70 ; an
enemy to a free Bible, 72 ; and discussion,
78 ; opposed to free inquiry, 73 : and private
judgment, 73 : punishes wisdom and truth,
75, 76 ; whom she condemns, 75, 77 ; her fal-^e
claims rebutted, 76, 78 ; true purpose in her
educational methods, 79.

Sanctification and the sensibilities, 458.

Science, classitication of Comte, 26 : natural,
and theology, 91 ; the authority of the Bible,
95 ; conclusions not delinite and perfect, 100-
105 : caution against anti-Christian, 116 ; ten-
dency to become anti-theological, 118 : ac-
counted for, 118 ; substituted by some for
revelation, 119 ; its imperious attitude, 119 ;
unwarranted accusations, 120; practical claim
of infallibility, 121 : should not be allowed to
boast of immunity from error, 124 ; its ad-
vances admitted, 124 ; but certain claims dis-
proved. 125 ; its hypotheses, 126 ; changeable-
ness, 126 ; its incomjileteness, 127 ; burden of
proof rests upon it, 127 ; all not opposed, 141,
144, 145, 150 ; physical has an anti-theological
tendency, 145 ; but tendency may be counter-
veiled, 146 ; reasons for anti-theological ten-
dency, 146 ; claimed by Dr. Woodrow to be
silent as to origin of forces and agents. 147 ;
the evil tendency claimed to be in the student,
not in the science, 148 ; natural, objection to
its introduction into a seminary course of
study, 138 ; grounds of objection, 138. 139 ;
its fallibility, 151 ; uncertainties of, 151 ; is
still correcting itself, 151 ; relation to revela-
tion, their " metes and bounds," 144 ; their
relation in respect to fallibility and infalli-
bility, 151 ; not upon a level as sources of
knowledge, 152 : theological relations of, 156 ;
idea of, declared by Bflcher incompatible with
the idea of God, 108 : anti-theistic, position of,
479.

Scientia media, Bledsoe on, 187 ; origin of the
doctrine of, 256 ; repudiated by Rome, 257 ;
disproved, 258 ; by the fact that it ascribes to
God inferential knowledge, 258 ; by its con-
sequences, 259.

Scientists, their usual arrogance. 151 ; not
always true to the inductive method, 151.

Second table of the law and the legal jirofes-
sion, 1.

Self-determining power of the will, Bledsoe's
views of, 184.

Sensibilities, reUgious, (See Excitements.)

Sensibility, and desire, distinction between,
185 ; and functions of, 280.

Sensualistic philosophy, the, 117,141,142, held
by John Stuart IVIill, 30 ; its inconsistency, 50.

Sin, origin of, and Bledsoe's theiry of holiness,
245 ; relation to free-agency and rise of voli-
tions, 260.

Skepticism, metaphysical, 38 ; of some modem
scientists, 121 ; universal, not the result of
skepticism concerning some teachings of
science, 149.

Slavery. 61 ; arguments for, 62 ; defect in, 62 ;
and ijolygamy. 63 ; the only solution of poli-
tical questions connectt-d vrith, 64 ; mistaken
method of debating, 64 ; its abstract lawful-
ness or unlawfulness the question, 64 ; the
constitution, 65 ; need for proper considera-
tion, 66 ; moderation and soundness needed
at the South in discussing, 66 ; arguments
that are unsound, 67 ; and Jacobinism, 501,
509 ; the Bible doctrine, 509ft'.

Smith, Prof. F. H., on doctrine of "natural-
ness" in a creation, 169.

Sociology, its place in the positive philosophy,
26.

Sophistry is falsehood. 8.

Soul, The Immortality of, 669. (See Immor-
tality.)

South, true policy of, in reference to slavery,
68.

Spectroscope, its revelations considered, 163 ;
theories based upon the, 436 ; Dr. Carpenter's
caution, 437.

Spinoza's pantheism, 530.

Spontaneity, man's, 34.

Stahl on civic ethics, 304.

Stewart, Dugald, on induction, 363 ; system
baseless. 365 ; akin to Hume's philosophy,
365.

Style, simplicity in pulpit, 80 ; naturalness, 83.

Substance, what is, 571 ; the teachings of com-
mon sense, 572.

Supernaturalism, demanded and implied in
nature, 40.

Syllogism, the age of the, 349 ; applied to the
inductive method, 408.

Sympathy, relation of, to religious affections,
461 ; proper use of, 463.

Taylors's, Dr., Pelagianism, 2.30, 231.
Teieological argument for God's existence, 476.
Theodicy, Bledsoe's sophistical, 61, 181, 189, 190.
Theological Seminaries, management of, 137.
Theology, and science, 91, 156 ; is it a human

science ? 153.
Thirty nine Articles, the, and Calvinism, 193.
Thought, feeling the temperature of, 274.
Tenth, the power and triumph of, 136.
Turretin on religious emotions, 460.
Twisse's Dr., views on decrees of God, 193.

Ueberweg's interpretation of Aristotle, 353.^
United Synod of the ' South, terms of union

with, 165.
Unity of the spirit, 578, 581.

Vernacular tongues, why disused by Rome,
70.

Vicariously, aman may not do wrong, 12.

Volitions, not uncaused, 184 ; follows subjective
motive, 185, 187 ; God's knowledge of, 187 ;
the philosophy of, 211 ; relation to disposi-
tion, 213 ; in the mind the etScient or cause,
214 : Bledsoe's view of this. 214, 215 ; Bible
psychology on the rise of, 218 ; how they arise
in a free agent, 239 ; the answers of three
classes, 240 : the testimony of consciousness,
241 ; of character. 243 ; proofs of the correct-
ness of the author's view, 241 ; from con-
sciousness, 241 ; from character 243 ; objec-
tions answered, 244 245 ; from the certainty
of influence, in education etc., 246 ; from the
rational and moral nature of free volitions,

246 ; from a proper test of man's free choice
concerning his x-ummum honum, 247 ; from
the nature of God and all rational beings,

247 ; from God's foreknowledge, foreordina-
tion, prediction and providence relative to
acts of free agents. 248 ; from true doctrine
of regeneration, 260 : from the results of the
adoption of the opposite, 261 ; their morality

INDEX.

611

determined by subjective motives, 274 ; rela-
tion to free-agency, 282.

Watson's modified Arminianism, 182.

Weslej , John, nearer trutli than early Armin-
ianism, 182 : OD original sin, 239, 248.

Wesley anisui's teaching as to depravity, 181.

Wesleyans. iinconscioiis orthodoxy of many, 183.

Westmiuster Confession on Creation, 177. 178.

Whateley's, Archbishop, objection ti the Aris-
totelian syllogism of induction. 3.57 ; his ex-
planation of induction, 358. objections, 3^9.

Whewell's interpretation of Aristotle, 352. 3G0.

Wisdom and omnipotence of God sufiiciently
account for creation. 134.

WUl. the equilibrium of the, 182, 184 : the Wes-
leyan view of its ability, 183 : Edwards on
the, 183 ; Bledsoe on the t elf -determining
power of, 184 ; what Calvinists mean by " the
corruption of the,'" 281 ; the meaning of the
term, 236 : free, an ambi«iiou8 term, 238 ; the
right theory of, 241. (See Frcc-agcncy and
Volition.)

Woman suffrage necessary if the Jacobin theory
of government be accepted, 501, 507 ; argu-
ments against, 507.

Woodrow, Dr. James, criticism of the caution

against anti- Christian science, 137 : charges
that the author disallows and rejects all
physical science, 140 : a misconception, 140 ;
charges with ignorance, 141 : misunderstand-
ing and contradictions, 142 ; letter to, 143 ;
amazing misapprehension'and misconception,
145 ; declares natural science to be silent as
to origin of forces and agents. 147; claims
that Ihe anti theological tendency is in the
student, not in the science, 148 ; led into in-
consistencies. 148 ; accuses the author of
teaching universal skepticism, 149 ; this
charge a bhmder, 150 : degrades the know-
ledge of God through revelation to the level
of the knowledge acquired through the physi-
cal sciences, 152 ; wrong view of theology, 153;
opposed to the Confession, 153 ; claims that
God B children may ask and enjoy spiritual
guidance when they study God's works as
well as his word, 154; fulfils a prophecy of
the evil of teaching science in a theological
chair. 15.5; heips sco'u upon the idea that
science has any theological tendency, 154 ;
accuses the author of culpable ignorance,
155, 157 ; the charge refuted, 155 ; personali-
ties, 1(55.
World, the age of the, 101, 104.

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